


White Noise

by saltyfeathers



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 19:03:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2161686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyfeathers/pseuds/saltyfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in an unnamed, perpetually rainy city on the east coast, something haunts dean and cas’ apartment. they’d like to pretend they don’t know what’s living in the space between them, but feigned ignorance can only keep them above water for so long.</p>
<p>something happened nine months ago. something they don’t talk about.</p>
<p>but the things people don’t talk about often find ways to speak for themselves, whether dean and cas are ready to pay their dues or not. the rain is an unforgiving entity, and as it continues to pervade the city; as it seeps into their already cold bones, they can feel the ocean rising around them, leaving them choking not on just what happened nine months ago, but what they’ve come to mean to each other since then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Noise

I.

Dean Winchester wakes up in a cold sweat and can't, for the life of him, remember why.

On instinct, he rolls over, prepared to stare at Cas' back for as long as it takes for the sweat to cool, but all he's met with is an empty bed.

Right. Cas is working till close tonight at the bar, which means he won't be home for- Dean squints at the disgustingly bright LED clock on Cas' nightstand- at least another three hours. He turns onto his back and stares at the ceiling in the dark, frustrated. He's not sure if his discomfort stems from his inability to remember the dream, or from his subconscious vehemently trying to keep secrets from him. All he knows is that he's tired as hell but most likely won't be able to fall back asleep tonight.

Disgruntled, both at Cas for reasons he’s unwilling to delve into right now, and at his own incredibly insistent insomnia that's flared up in the last nine months ( _wonder why_ , he thinks bitterly) Dean gets out of bed and pads down the hallway of their tiny, crappy apartment, rubbing at the sleep in his eyes with both palms and subsequently bumping into the divide between the kitchen and living room.

"For fuck's..." Dean doesn't even bother finishing his objection, just fumbles for the light switch and blinks furiously at the sudden lack of darkness.

They've lived here for months, now, and it still doesn't feel like home. Dean knows it never will, that a ghost lives in these walls that both he and Cas (but especially Cas) refuse to talk about. Dean's tried bringing it up, has gotten to the point where he feels the need to talk about it, just so he can prove that that night really happened, as perverted and horrendous as that thought is, and all the implications that accompany it.

He starts to make a displeased noise in the back of his throat, but it refuses to come out thanks to the hours of silence he's endured in the apartment since Cas left for work earlier in the night. Not that Cas is exactly extroverted, but sometimes Dean just needs reassurance that he's not the only person left on earth- and, more importantly, that he's not the only one left holding the godforsaken secret that's been gnawing a hole in the deepest pits of him for months and months.

He flicks off the lights.

Their old, second hand couch coughs up a cloud of dust as he plops himself down on it. More than once, he’s speculated that at least three people have died on this couch at separate times in its history, and that it’s just been lying in wait all these years, preparing to claim its next victim.

That’s probably why it smells so bad, at least, despite the bottles and bottles of Febreze him and Cas have wasted trying to de-stink it.

But it’s not just the couch. Something _pervades_ this apartment, has soaked into every carpet fibre and every bath towel. Dean tastes it in the food they buy, no matter how much he boils and tries to scrub it away. He can taste it in the cigarettes he smokes out on their strip of balcony at two in the morning on nights he can’t sleep and doesn’t feel like losing himself in the mindless drone of late-night infomercials. When him and Cas fuck, it’s in the air between them, tainting the sweat on their skin and haunting the vulnerable crevices of their interlocked bodies.

He flips on the television, a burst of static before the signal kicks in, broadcasting him 1am’s best hits. Billy Mays and the juicer guy and the slapchop guy; the guy with the knives and the Malibu couple with the magic blender. They’re bright and happy and talk about how a vacuum changed their lives because it can suck up their kid’s spilled cheerios exactly point five seconds quicker than the store brand model.

Infomercials always make Dean feel inadequate in the strangest of ways. He glances at their paltry coat closet where their thrifted vacuum cleaner sits, used maybe once every month. From there, his gaze slides to the kitchen that always manages to look sad somehow, and his mind drifts from shoe storage systems and hair removal marvels to the empty shelf in the fridge where all his alcohol used to sit.

There wasn’t alcohol in the apartment for long. Cas made sure of that. Two weeks after they moved in together, Cas got up in the middle of the night and emptied every single one of Dean’s beers, along with every single bottle of whiskey he had stashed away in a cupboard he didn’t even realize Cas knew existed.

“When you drink, you get emotional,” was Cas’ reasoning, his face perfectly impassive, cool, like they weren’t talking about Dean potentially blowing the lid off everything because he was a barely functioning alcoholic. “And when you’re emotional, you talk.”

Dean had wanted to smack Cas, because his general response to people fucking with his alcohol was to smack them. Instead, he had to swallow his pride and nod tightly, because on the last night alcohol was in the apartment, Dean had been two of three digits into dialing 911 before Cas had found him, a heap on the kitchen floor, half-speaking and half-mushily sobbing into the phone, too drunk to realize he hadn’t dialled that last one.

In one of his oft-pathetic attempts at levity, Dean had said, “hey, if I hadn’t been so drunk, I would have actually dialed that last 1 and then where would we be now, huh?” Like unwelcome cigarette smoke, the joke had curdled between them in strained, annoyed silence, and Dean snubbed the light out by adding, “It was a fucking joke, Cas. I had a sense of humor once upon a time.”

Cas hadn’t said anything to that. His face just tightened, and Dean got the message clear enough: No more alcohol.

Quitting cold turkey had fucked Dean up so badly he legitimately thought he was going to die. He can remember begging Cas to just kill him now, as the initial delirium took over and he saw some of the most terrifying things he had ever experienced thanks to some pretty spectacular DTs.

Cas left the bedroom after that, but by then Dean was so far gone he still doesn’t know how long Cas stayed away. All Dean knows is that during that time, Cas- who, previously, had never smoked a cigarette in his life- lit his way through a pack and a half of Dean’s. He came back to press a cold cloth to Dean’s head and try to force him to drink some water, but he ended up vomiting it back up all over Cas’ lap.

At one point, in the first twenty four hours after his last drink, and he was practically drowning in sweat and the yanking in his head was at an all-time high, Dean had squeezed Cas’ hand so hard he was sure he had permanently disfigured the bone. “It’s a punishment,” he had gasped, as Cas gingerly patted his back, hesitantly rubbing infrequent circles there. “I never believed in karma until now.”

Almost half a year later, and sometimes Dean’s hands still shake. His insomnia has only gotten worse. He spends his days working in a damp , dumpy record store, part-time, and spends his nights staring mindlessly at television that’s more than half static, if they at least remember to pay their electricity bill for the month.

The television hums quietly in the background, Dean feeling his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, but refusing to close. He drifts in and out of consciousness, but never really sleeps. Eventually, the TV channel gives up and goes off air, having exhausted itself selling insomniacs like Dean cures that don’t work. The medley of rainbow stripes is bright and intrusive, insistent and unmoving. It bleeps incessantly at Dean, the sound seemingly growing in intensity even though it’s impossible. As the sound is reaching an alarming pitch, Dean manages to locate the remote that always seems to disappear, and flicks it off, the sudden silence jarring.

He opens his mouth, trying to get his ears to pop, like he’s on a rapidly descending plane. 

The next thing he hears are quiet keys jingling on the other side of the door, then the soft click of Cas unlocking it and subsequent muted entry that he’s always been so good at. Cas is so unassuming so much of the time, Dean almost forgets what he was like in the alleyway that night.

Dean knows Cas knows he’s sitting here, but Cas doesn’t ask why he’s sitting in a pitch black living room at 3am. He’s come home to it too many times.

There’s the soft _shush_ of Cas shrugging off his beaten leather jacket and throwing it over the armchair adjacent Dean, because he’s proved himself incapable of using the coat/vacuum closet for at least half of its intended purpose. He tosses his keys onto the kitchen counter, ignoring the bowl on the table by the door for the exact same reason. He’s brought the cold of the night in with him, and even though Dean wasn’t exactly warm before, he only notices now, and shivers.

“You didn’t order another blender, did you?” Cas asks mildly, moving around the room, out of Dean’s sight, shuffling through the mail Dean brought up this morning, opening and closing the fridge.

“No,” Dean says, “Just the food processor, this time.” On occasion, they try to act like normal people. Usually, they fail, but sometimes it gets to a point between them that it’s like something _snaps_ , and instead of them having a blow-out fight, they just trade harmless banter. They’ve done this whole ‘relationship’ thing completely backwards, and eventually, Dean can only hope that their connection will dwindle until it’s nothing more than meaningless television static, merely a droning, low level hum that he can learn to completely tune out.

“Good,” Cas says distractedly, like he’s already bored with the conversation. He walks out of the room, and even though it’s dark and Dean can’t actually see, he watches Cas’ retreating back with a kernel of disquiet sitting in his stomach.

Thirty seconds later, he follows Cas into their room, only to find that he’s already curled up in a lump under the sheets, the jeans and button up that he wore to work flung haphazardly in the direction of the closet. Dean had once asked him why he was so allergic to closets, and Cas had replied, completely seriously, “Because monsters live in them.” It doesn’t explain his disdain for the bowl of keys, but Dean’ll take what he can get.

Dean crawls back into bed, and stares at Cas’ back like he had originally planned to after whatever he had been dreaming about woke him up. It’s not like Cas is exactly a warm beacon of comfort- in fact, Dean’s found he has more in common with ice and snow than anything closer to the equator- but watching another human steadily breathe is, thankfully, a faceless endeavor. It’s a smooth rhythm that finally has Dean feeling his brain start to shut down for maybe another hour or two of sleep for the night, but then Cas breaks the silence by speaking, and Dean is completely rigid again.

“I thought I saw you tonight,” Cas says without turning over, “During my shift.”

Dean wants to say, _that’s impossible_ , _I was too busy making smoothies with Mick and Mimi_ , but instead, all he says is, “yeah?” Cas sounds exhausted, but Dean knows it’s not a physical thing. Cas is ice and snow and all kinds of harsh precipitation, but he’s not unmalleable. He’s broken, too. It’s just harder to see.

“It wasn’t,” Cas says. He breathes. “You, I mean,” he adds. “It wasn’t you.”

Cas was worried, Dean thinks. He was worried about him falling off the wagon and drunkenly trying to ruin their lives, like he’s wont to do.

But there’s a lilt to his voice that makes Dean question the intention. Cas rarely feels the need to hide his face from Dean when they talk, even in bed. He’s not in the business of hiding the truth, unless the truth counts as the incident nine months ago- then, pliers wouldn’t make him talk.

Maybe Cas was worried _for_ him, not _about_ him.

Wouldn’t that throw a wrench into this entire scheme.

“No,” Dean says, “It wasn’t.”

The tiniest hint of Cas relaxing, in the way his shoulder muscles contract and loosen.

“I’m not going to blow the whistle, Cas,” Dean says, about as close to tenderness as he’s ever gotten. It might be a lie once they reach the inevitable, messy end of this thing, but right now, it’s the truth.

Cas says nothing, and Dean watches sleep overtake him.

He stares at his favorite spot on the ceiling, a stain that leaked from upstairs that they could never get rid of.

He’s just about to get up and start channel surfing in the other room again, when he hears a muffled _thump_ come from somewhere in the apartment. He glances at Cas, checking to see if the noise made him stir, but he remains firmly asleep. Dean freezes, thinking that maybe his sleep deprived brain is playing tricks on him. Silence encroaches around him in a way that it never has before, and it feels like someone’s just stuffed cotton balls in his ears. His brain is fuzzy, fizzing like the static from the television, but it doesn’t stop him from hearing another _thump_ , this time a little louder, and a little closer.

He rolls out of bed, quietly opening his nightstand drawer and pulling out his .45. It’s fully loaded, which isn’t exactly gun safety 101, but they live in a sketchy neighborhood and he taught Cas how to handle it properly so there wouldn’t be any accidents.

As he eases open their closed bedroom door, Dean hears the noise again. It sounds like someone hefting a burlap sack full of wet potatoes, and he wonders if they’re in the process of being robbed. He should wake Cas, but the most he ends up doing is shooting him one last glance before gently closing the door behind him. It’s _probably_ nothing. Dean’s just being his typical, paranoid, addled self. He’s never been quite the same since giving up the booze; tetchier, more jumpy, finger always on the trigger sort of guy.

He slowly makes his way into the main area, gaze sweeping the entirely of their front room, from the balcony door to the television to their cramped kitchen. He sees nothing, crouched behind the wall as he is. Nothing seems to be out of place.

Again. On his right.

It’s in the front closet.

Dean swallows hard, feels his palms start to sweat. He edges his way towards the closet, and whatever’s in there continues to move, and Dean’s reminded of those movies where rich students at boarding schools would fill bags with oranges and beat up the new kid. That’s what it sounds like, and the worst part is, the kids always would choose oranges so they wouldn’t bruise.

He reaches out slowly, sweat prickling under his arms now, too. Mere inches away from the door, and his heart is pounding in his chest, loud enough for the entire east coast to hear, no doubt. The shuffling in the closet has stopped, but it’s a loaded silence, like whatever’s in there knows what he’s planning, and is sitting there, waiting…

One more breath, and Dean’s hand is on the knob. He turns it, and-

\- “What’s going on?” Cas asks sleepily from behind him, and Dean curses and jumps back from the closet like it’s electrocuted him. The tension drains out of him immediately, and without fanfare, he opens the closet.

Completely empty, minus the normal closet fare- coats, umbrellas, a wooden box for storage.

“I thought I heard something,” Dean mumbles, shaking his head as he closes the closet door. “I overreacted.”

Cas eyes the gun in his hand.

“You really did,” he says levelly. Then, “If you thought someone was in the apartment, why didn’t you wake me?”

The honest answer to that question is that Dean doesn’t know. Instead, he says, “I told you. Figured I was overreacting.”

Cas stares at him long enough that Dean feels justified in shoving the gun into his chest, and enjoying Cas’ ensuing flinch too much.

“The safety is still on,” he informs Cas snidely as he brushes past him, annoyed at both himself and Cas for this whole scene. He goes back into their room and sits on their bed and stares at his minutely shaking hands, resisting the all too familiar urge to pick up the nearest bottle. “Fuck,” he mumbles, just as Cas appears in the open doorway, face quizzical. The gun is held loosely in his left hand, dangling towards the floor.

“Did you open this door?” Cas asks, like Dean hadn’t just completely brushed him off.

“Uh. No.”

“So it was open when you walked back into the room?” Cas double checks.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” Cas closes the door and walks around to Dean’s side of the bed, gently placing the .45 back into the nightstand.

“Why?” Dean asks, as Cas returns to his own side of the bed, sliding under the covers.

Cas takes a moment to respond, although when he does, he seems very unbothered.

“Because when I left the room to follow you, I closed it.”

Once he finally manages to succumb to a couple hours of sleep, the thoughts that follow him under are of Cas telling him that monsters live in the closet.

***

It’s raining when Dean’s opening the store the next morning, but it rains so often in this city that he barely notices it anymore. His cup of coffee from the sleepy café down the street is sending half appealing bouts of steam into the cool morning air in front of him, and as he unlocks the door and steps into the typically damp building, he forces himself to take a sip of the scalding coffee to finally warm up a bit. Sometimes he thinks that chill that Cas brings home with him never really leaves him, follows him everywhere he goes, even when Cas isn’t around.

He drapes his coat over a chair in the back room that also serves as a paltry office, and goes about his typical opening routine; turn on all the lights, set another pot of coffee brewing, count the till, do the paperwork. Once he’s finished, he sits behind the cash and stares listlessly across the soggy shop, still marveling at how any of these records manage to work in these poor conditions. He chooses a record to play for the day, and while he generally enjoys running the typical classic rock gambit, a case from an entirely different era catches his eye. He’s too exhausted for anything too heavy, so he puts on a compilation record, the opening strains of _Bei Mir Bist Du Shein_ by the Andrews Sisters crackling to life.

He stares glumly around the small shop, eyes itching, the popping and snapping of the record a constant reminder that this place is always so _wet_. He always thinks that it’s just their apartment that’s inhabited by _something_ , but, as he stares at the limp air vents at the top of the wall, he realizes that it’s everywhere. This whole city is infected with the rain, with unwanted moisture.

The bell chimes to indicate someone’s just come into the store, and Dean looks up to see a young teenager enter, sandy haired and blue eyed. He nods at Dean before turning around to start browsing, flipping through the albums like he doesn’t even care what he’s looking at. Dean surreptitiously glances at his watch. It’s early enough that he’s surprised to have a customer- even stranger is that it’s a teenager.

“Can I help you find anything?” Dean asks from behind the desk, lowering the volume on the record slightly.

“Uh,” the kid scratches his head, shrugging awkwardly in his denim jacket. “I dunno,” he says, fiddling with the strap on his backpack.

“Well,” Dean does his best approximation of a smile, ready to suggest his typical picks, “What kind of music do you like?” He turns the current music down a little more, but the pops and whorls remain just as loud, undeterred by the volume control.

“I… dunno,” the kid says, chewing his bottom lip now, obviously distressed.  

 “Okay,” Dean says slowly, “What about songs? Are there any songs you like?”

The kid opens his mouth to speak, but it coincides with a rather loud scratch from the record.

“Shit,” Dean says, and reaches over to flip the record player off. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

The teenager opens his mouth again, and Dean almost falls off his chair when, instead of his timid voice, the crackling of the record player is the only sound that comes out. The kid is walking towards him, his mouth moving like he’s speaking, but all Dean can hear is distortion, and it fizzes in his blood, puts enough pressure behind his eyes that he has to clasp his hands to his face The kid’s eyes are indistinct, trained on him, but blurry, like someone’s put tape over them. He barely notices when he falls off his stool, face smashed into the carpet and groaning at the pain in his head. The lights are flickering, and Dean can hear the kid moving closer, although he can’t see him anymore, from behind the desk.

He tries to heave himself up, but a pair of ruddy sneakers meets his nose when he looks up, and the sound is so overwhelming now that he finds himself collapsing onto the floor all over again. There’s blood running through his fingers, and just faintly, he can hear the music playing in the spaces between the static, the Andrews Sisters crooning about how their hearts grow light when their boys are coming into their sight.

But the song starts to change, to distort, just like the record crackling. It echoes and becomes distant, like it’s being sung through a tin can telephone. Their voices swirl, pitch going up and down at an almost unbearably lethargic pace, and reaches such a horrific crescendo of absolute noise and pure destruction that Dean can only _feel_ himself screaming, because it’s too loud for him to hear.

He thinks, not for the first time lately, that this is it, he’s finally going to die.

When he looks up, however, all he sees is Cas standing in the doorway, a coffee in each hand, staring at Dean.

***

Dean tells Cas the barest bones of what happened. He’s not interested in having Cas trying to check him into a psych ward or, more likely, logic him to death about it.

“Just some teenager fucking around,” is his explanation, because all he has to show for his troubles is a bruise on his forehead. The blood that had been streaming between his fingers twenty minutes ago has mysteriously vanished, along with whatever injury the flow originated from.

“Maybe you should call the-” Cas almost says _police_ , but then stops, swallowing the word down. He shifts his weight in his chair, clearing his throat. “Are you going to tell your boss?” he asks instead.

“What, _Rufus_?” Dean snorts. “He’d kill me for calling him on his day off.”

Cas glances at their rapidly cooling coffees on the desk in the office, and Dean follows his gaze.

“We’ve lived together for six months,” Dean observes, “And you’ve never- not once- brought me coffee.”

Cas doesn’t shrug, but he does raise his eyebrows just a bit. “What, that means that I’m locked out from doing anything I haven’t already done in the first six months of our relationship?”

The word _relationship_ comes out twisted, but Dean lets it slide because he knows it’s easier than _accomplice_.

“It’s just _weird_ ,” he says. “You’ve got to have better things to do than bring me more coffee- it’s not as if I don’t drink enough on my own.” Better caffeine than alcohol, is their unspoken agreement. Dean’s pretty sure he’ll jitter into an early, nicotine infused grave, but at this point, he’s almost ready to welcome it.

Cas reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

“You’re right,” he says, “I’m here because I think you should see this. The coffee was just preliminary.” He taps the screen a couple times, and then holds it out to Dean, who takes it.

“What is this?” he asks, squinting.

“The inside of our closet door,” Cas says grimly, and Dean feels his eyes widen. “I took it this morning after you left for work.”

“Holy…” Dean rubs at his jaw, his gut clenching nervously. The wood is splintered, cracked, like someone had been trying to claw their way out. There are strips of curling, shredded wood shavings all over the floor. He looks up at Cas, who’s watching him carefully.

“It may not have been the overreaction I accused you of,” Cas admits.

Dean’s shaking his head slowly, dropping his eyes back to the photo, almost mesmerized by the destruction.

“What the hell could do this?” he asks, “like, maybe a stray cat or raccoon got stuck in there or something?”

“That’s a lot of damage for any kind of animal around here,” Cas says, “And even if that was the case, there’s no blood.”

“So…” Dean taps his fingers on the arm of his chair, his foot tapping along uneasily in tandem. He chews his lip as Cas watches him in that way only Cas can, unsettling and disquieting as it is. “Our apartment is haunted or some shit?”

Cas gives him a funny look. “I don’t think so,” he says, “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”

“You came down here- with coffee, _before_ noon, which is unheard of for you- just to talk reasonable explanations?” Dean asks skeptically, “Or were you expecting me to talk you out of your ‘reasonable explanations’?”

Despite all the hidden, unspoken tension between them, a mild distaste for each other still sometimes bubbles up to the surface in any kind of conversation that hints at a disagreement, and it’s alive and well in this moment.

“I came down here as a favor to you,” Cas says coldly, “So that your paranoia from last night can be validated.” He stands up, moving to the doorway between the office and the rest of the store. “But if you’re not interested, fine.” He turns around and walks away. Dean stares after him, only to realize two seconds too late the real reason that Cas showed up here today.

Luckily, there’s no customers in the store (not that that’s an oddity at this time of day and the quality of product they sell), which gives Dean a chance to chase Cas, leaning out the front door and calling him back inside. It’s still raining, albeit lightly. For the most part, it’s turned into mist that clings to Dean’s exposed skin.

Cas turns around at the nearest intersection at his call, face stormy, almost completely swallowed by the day’s fog, but reluctantly heads back towards the shop.

“What?” he asks, clipped, his hair wild thanks to the encroaching humidity.

Dean leans against the door so that it remains open, crossing his arms. The glass is cold against his back.

“You’re afraid,” he says. “You came here because you didn’t want to be in the apartment alone.”

Cas narrows his eyes.

“That’s absurd,” he snaps, “Why can’t you just accept that I was doing you a favor, Dean?”

Dean feels the anger start to spark through him, quick and hot. He uncrosses his arms and jabs an accusing finger at Cas.

“Because we don’t _do_ each other favors,” he hisses, “Unless you count giving each other orgasms on a semi-regular basis, this is a mutually beneficial agreement to cover our own guilty asses.”

Cas’ eyes narrow further, and Dean can almost hear him grit his teeth.

“Last I checked, _your_ ass was the only one that needed covering,” he says quietly, “Or have you forgotten your drunk stint on the phone with the 911 operator?” He takes a small step forward, not exactly crowding Dean up against the glass, but bristling enough that he may as well be. “I’ve been cleaning up your messes since the start of this thing.”

Dean actually scoffs in his face.

“You forfeited any kind of moral high ground in this situation the moment I met you,” he reminds Cas dangerously, making sure to check that the sidewalk around them is clear- not many people are up and about at this time in the morning in this part of town. “So before you try to Stockholm Syndrome me again, you may want to remember that.”

Something cracks in Cas’ carefully cultivated expression at that, and Dean knows he hit a nerve, even if he doesn’t know why.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Cas spits, before whipping around and heading back out into the fog, coattails swirling with the movement. Dean watches him until he disappears around a corner, and then steps back into the store, feeling more unnerved than ever.

***

Something in this city doesn’t like cell phone signals. Maybe it’s the rain, or the fog, or the fact that people get mugged more often than not on their way home from work. Whatever it is, it makes Sam’s voice come through Dean’s phone tinny and echoing, the ever present static buzzing away as seemingly permanent background noise to Dean’s life.

“Sorry, Dean,” Sam’s saying, “But I don’t have a lot of time. I’m at the airport on the way to a convention now, but I just wanted to call and check in. It’s been a while.”

“You were the one who called,” Dean says flatly. Honestly, he’s grateful for it. The store’s been empty for almost an hour now, and he swears he can feel Cas simmering all the way from their apartment. It’s nice to hear the voice of a person that doesn’t hate him, even if there’s an eternally exasperated undertone to it since Sam finally got that lawyer gig in California.

There’s a sigh on the other end of the line; the _do you really want to do this?_ Isn’t said, but implied clearly enough. Dean’s started to take a warped pride in how fast he can make his brother regret contacting him.

Of course, it’s only been like this for the past nine months. Before that, Sam and Dean were thick as thieves, having been raised almost exclusively on the move by their military father until they finally got a clue and took off to find some stability of their own. John died years ago, their mother years before that. Dean worked whatever gigs he could find to provide for him and Sam, and eventually, Sam got his very own clue and flew out west to go to college.  Dean was on his own until he met Cas, and it was only then that everything really went to hell.

There are days Dean _doesn’t_ want to blame Cas, but even if it wasn’t Cas’ fault, it _was_ Cas’ fault. Regardless, the Stockholm Syndrome jab was a low blow for sure.

“Anyway,” Sam tries again, cautious, “How are you? How’s Cas?” He’s not prying, but his tone is definitely more pointed when he asks, eggshells crackling beneath him, “How’re you & Cas?” There’s an ampersand there instead of the actual word- Dean can hear it in his voice, like Sam wants to think they’re some kind of brightly colored kid’s show; the happy-go-lucky duo. Or maybe Bert and Ernie. Sam would probably get a kick out of that if Dean actually bothered to say it.

Sam showed up out of the blue three months ago, flown in from California, still burning with the pacific sun and surf as he charged his way through the dreary city , determined to save his big brother- from what, he was never exactly sure, but he sure wanted to stage an intervention, regardless.

Instead, he met Cas. And oh, Cas was so good. Sam thinks Cas is the best thing to happen to Dean in a long time. He soothed and cajoled and charmed and Dean was equal parts disgusted and awed when Cas had Sam- a guy who literally gets paid to catch lies- putty in his capable hands. They all went out for beers at the same bar Cas works at now, and a merry time was had by all.

The thing with Dean is that as much as he tries to hide it, he’s transparent as plastic wrap. His heart is pinned to his sleeve so tightly he finds himself gasping for breath sometimes. The only way no one’s seen right through him yet is because he’s basically cut all ties but the most necessary, and those he navigates with serious caution. But Cas is a stoic through and through, hard and marble and apathetic to a fault when he needs to be. He’s a mannequin, dressed up in whatever emotion’s in season and displayed provocatively in the store window to entice unprepared shoppers.

Cas is _dangerous_. He could be a lot more dangerous than he is, but the potential is enough to send cold tendrils of apprehension to the very tips of Dean’s extremities whenever he watches Cas ‘flip the switch’ as he’s come to know it. It’s one of the most effective and terrifying defense mechanisms Dean’s ever seen, and it makes it hard not to see Cas as a wholly manipulative, misanthropic genius who views emotions the same way scientists view lab rats.

He’s seen the genuine emotion from Cas- enough to know that there’s a lot of it, buried deep in some unfathomable black hole somewhere near his center. _That_ night, for instance, Dean thought he was going to have to peel Cas off the pavement himself after he had collapsed to his knees, practically broken clean in two. He’s _capable_ , but more in control of his emotions than any human ever should be.

“Cas is fabulous,” Dean says, “Footloose and fancy free.”

“Dean.”

“And you know me,” Dean continues, silently thanking the gods that Sam drinks gallons of coffee; he’s learned how to swallow the bitterness without spitting a mouthful of scalding liquid all over his lap and making everyone look like a fool. “I’m living the dream.”

Dean can practically hear his brother pursing his lips in the middle of an SFO baggage drop off, fellow commuters squeezing tiny, sympathetic smiles out of tight mouths as they hurry past; _rough client, huh_? _Been there._

And then, like he’s wont to do at least fifty percent of the time when they speak nowadays, Sam sags- Dean can hear the rustle of the mic against fabric as Sam holds the earpiece to his chest to give him a moment to collect himself, and then-

“What happened, Dean? Please.” Sam is the scared little brother, the desiccated mother at the end of her rope, the world weary father who couldn’t possibly understand but will at least pat you on the shoulder in some sort of slim façade of solidarity. “What happened to my brother?”

As always, it rattles Dean. But never enough. They’ve had too many emotional U-turns in conversations in the past months for Dean to be surprised by them anymore. Dean actually thinks this may be the most selfish he’s ever been, cutting Sam out like this and doing everything he can to convince himself he’s doing it for the right reasons.

Lie to Sam because it’ll put him in an impossible position if he doesn’t.

Lie to Sam because it’ll kill him if he finds out.

Lie to Sam because it’ll kill _Dean_ if he finds out.

Lie to Sam because if he doesn’t, his baby brother is never going to look at him the same way ever again.

Lie to Sam and himself because he’s a piece of shit coward who can’t own up to his own actions.

 “ _Nothing_ ,” Dean says fervently, and he knows the wrong emotion is behind it, but that isn’t new, either; everything just seems to simmer in him like a stew, murky and coalescing, and whichever way the cauldron happens to tip is what spills out. He picks agitatedly at a pockmark in the desk in front of him, needling it with his fingernail.

Initially, Sam says nothing, but Dean can hear him gearing up to plaster on a fake smile and change the subject, because otherwise, he’s going to start yelling, or Dean might start yelling, but either way, it’ll end with someone angrily hanging up and then a stony silence for weeks at a time.

Instead, however, Sam’s voice has flattened out. It’s meant to be cold, Dean thinks, but he can hear the emotion simmering beneath it.

“I can’t do it anymore, Dean,” Sam says, matter of fact. There’s no background noise from his end now, and Dean wonders where the hell he managed to find a quiet spot in the airport.

“What, so you’re breaking up with me?” Dean scoffs, feeling his stomach drop to his feet. There’s relief there, too, however. Maybe in this case, no news is good news. He can be left to rot under the floorboards while his brother goes on to do great things. Exactly how it should be, and exactly how everyone always expected it to be.

“Dean,” Sam’s tone softens quickly, but his resolve doesn’t. “It’s been months, and I have no idea what to do, here. You won’t talk to me, or _anyone_ , really. You won’t tell me what’s wrong, you pushed me away when I tried to come help you.” There’s a dangerous amount of pity leaking into his tone as he says, “I’ve been talking to Cas and-”

“-You’ve been _what_ , Sam?” Dean practically shouts, immediately glancing around the store to make sure no customers had showed up while he was distracted.

Still empty.

“I’ve talked to Cas a couple times,” Sam says patiently. “I love you, Dean. You’re my brother and I’m worried about you, so I figured I’d get as close to the source as I could, since _you_ wouldn’t- still won’t- say a thing.”

Dean presses a hand to forehead, massaging his temples.

 “Well?” Dean asks, feeling the panic creeping up on him, “What did he say?”

“He’s worried about you too, Dean.”

Dean just manages to tamp down the hysterical laughter that threatens to burst out of him. He has to hand it to the guy; Cas is Oscar worthy, at the very least.

“He just wants what’s best for you, Dean,” Sam continues, using Dean’s name as the most depressingly earnest kind of punctuation, and it breaks Dean’s heart how sincere his poor, mislead brother is.

He knows, realistically, that Cas only had the one option when Sam came to him. Dean’s too easy to read, too soft, too obvious. Cas had to make do with the material he was given, like all good actors.

“I know,” Dean says quietly, way too late in the game to be playing along convincingly, but he figures when it comes to Cas, Sam’ll buy just about anything. “Look, Sam,” he says, trying to inject genuine sincerity into his words, because he truly means what he’s about to say. “Maybe space is a good thing right now. Let me get my head on straight and then hell, maybe I’ll be able to make it out west and remember what the sun actually looks like.”

Well, that last part was a lie, but the intention was legitimate, and that’s about all that Dean can ask for right now.

There’s a too casual sniff on Sam’s end, and Dean can see the lip twitching.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean tries to tease, even if it comes out too taut, “Stiff upper lip. Let your shitty big brother put his life back together.”

“You’re not a shitty brother,” Sam says.

“I am,” Dean corrects, and wants to tell Sam to let it go, drop it, because he really doesn’t want to know. Instead, he just says, “Gimme some time. I’ll figure myself out.” For good measure, he adds, “Cas, too. Cas’ll help.”

Dean thinks he’s about to say goodbye, good luck, but then Sam asks, quietly, confidentially, “Are things really okay with Cas?”

Good for him, Dean thinks. Of course, he has to debunk it, but he’s still proud.

“Cas is a great guy,” Dean says, “You know that.” Cas is _so_ good, though. What tripped him up? “Why do you ask like you think things really aren’t okay?”

Sam hesitates on the other end of the line, before speaking tentatively, haltingly. “It’s just… He loves you _so_ much.” There’s an almost bewildered pocket of silence after Sam says it, like the observation, spoken aloud, has only baffled him more.

That… was definitely not what Dean expected him to say. His mouth goes dry.

“So isn’t that like, the ideal for relationships?” Dean asks, trying to hide his suddenly hoarse voice. What the hell is Cas playing at, adding shit like that to the script?

“Well, I mean… do you feel the same way?” Sam asks cautiously. “It’s so hard to get a read on the thing you guys have.”

“Sam,” Dean warns, only because he doesn’t have a better answer.

“Okay, sorry,” Sam backs off immediately.

“No, I just- it’s complicated,” Dean says. “But things are good. Are fine. I swear.” He can’t have Sam thinking something is wrong with him and Cas, too, or else there’s no way he’d be willing to agree to the radio silence.

“Good,” Sam says with too much conviction, and Dean knows he’s putting on the airs now. “Dean… Take care of yourself, okay?”

“You too, Sam.”

There’s a small huff of laughter as Sam says, “And lay off the damn cigarettes, dude. I can hear them in your voice.”

Dean snorts inelegantly, glad to leave the conversation on something approximating the relationship they once had. He doesn’t tell Sam that the hoarseness in his voice isn’t from inhaling too much nicotine, but from this conversation.

“Only if you lay off the organic hippy garbage,” Dean quips back, feeling a bittersweet yearning bloom in his stomach. It’s literally been months since lighthearted banter has passed between them, and he never realized how much he missed it.  

“Bye, Dean,” Sam says.

“See ya, Sammy.”

It takes them both a beat too long to hang up, and Dean digs the heels of his palms into his eyes after, blaming the dry air in the soggiest record store in town.

***

Dean and Cas don’t fuck out their problems. They fuck on top of their problems, behind their problems. They take their problems missionary, but mostly, it’s not face to face. They fuck through their problems, and not in the emotionally cathartic ‘clearing the air’ kind of way. No, they fuck through their problems like Jack’s axe through the Torrance’s apartment door in the Overlook. They pound their problems to shit, hostile and violent, and in the most backwards of ways, it’s when they’re at their most honest with each other.

Dean tends to lose it, somewhat, on most occasions, burning, traitorous tears brimming in his eyes. Dean never expects Cas to do anything about this phenomenon or even acknowledge it. However, he always manages to feel humiliating inadequacy when Cas fails to respond, regardless of his own expectations.

They didn’t enter into this arrangement for comfort, or any kind of fulfillment. It’s purely a transaction, a way to weasel out of responsibility together. Technically, the distraction of sex should be a good thing, a plus. A way to take his mind off the guilt and permanent static in his life.

But every time Cas’ fingertips leave the tender skin of Dean’s waist cold; every time Cas eases out and retreats back to his side of the bed, because he doesn’t have the good grace to show how shitty he actually feels; every time Dean is the one to tuck tail and run, almost always ending up smoking like a chimney out on the balcony even though their unit is a non-smoking one and their landlord has less and less patience for the carelessly discarded butts and lingering stench of stale smoke. He claims it gets into the clothes and becomes impossible to get out, and _trust me, buddy, I know how you feel_.

Dean gets home from his shift around three thirty, to Cas staring broodingly out the window, sitting uncomfortably stiffly on the edge of the couch.

Dean chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, but instead of broaching the topic of what Sam told him, he finds his eye drawn to the open closet door. The scratches are still just as visible as they were this morning, woodshavings in the same haphazard pile. Cas’ back is directly turned to it, and Dean wonders if it’s intentional.

With an air of defiance, Dean hangs up his coat in the same closet, to no ill effect. Cas’ unchanging posture suggests he’s not impressed in the slightest.

Dean heads across the room to check if the plants on the balcony need water, but Cas grabs his wrist on his way past.  Dean turns to look at him, eyebrow raised slightly. Cas isn’t exactly a touchy person unless it involves an orgasm.

“I need…” Cas starts uncertainly, only half meeting Dean’s eye. He trails off, reconsidering.

“Bedroom?” he asks instead, and it’s like a sad box on the clipboard of Dean’s brain is checked off, more unenthusiastically than usual.

And yet, despite himself- despite every fucking weird thing that’s happened today- Dean feels the familiar pulse of arousal jolt through him.

“Don’t you work tonight?” Dean asks, in lieu of answer. “In like…” he checks his watch, “half an hour?”

“I’m not asking you to run a marathon with me,” Cas says pointedly, “We’ll be quick.”

Cas drops Dean’s hand as he hesitates- not necessarily because he doesn’t want to, but because this isn’t the first time he’s ever considered how fucked up this whole thing is.

“Yeah,” Dean swallows his objections, “Okay.”

Exactly zero mention of their argument earlier. Exactly zero mention of what Sam said.

He follows Cas back to their room, and as soon as they cross the threshold, Dean feels a chill run through him, momentarily cutting into the arousal. It raises goosebumps on his arms.

“Do you find it cold in here?” Dean asks as Cas takes his shirt off for him.

“What?” Cas asks, pressing his mouth to the juncture between Dean’s neck and shoulder, obviously distracted.

“It’s cold,” Dean repeats, as Cas takes his own shirt off.

“You know the heating’s been fucked for weeks now,” Cas mumbles against the line of Dean’s jaw, fingers locking tightly around his hips.

From the looks of it, Cas isn’t affected by the drop in temperature at all, which should probably tick a very different box somewhere in the back of Dean’s head, but then Cas is fumbling with the button on his jeans, and the thought flits away.

So yeah, Dean’s pretty easy. Before Cas, there were boys and girls and boys _and_ girls, and all variations thereof.  All it ever took was some interest in both Dean and orgasms, and they were off.

It’s not like him and Cas have discussed monogamy, because really, they aren’t together. Dean’s ninety nine percent sure Cas hasn’t slept with anyone other than Dean since this thing started, and the same can be said for Dean.

It’s not Cas Dean is worried about, though. He doesn’t owe Cas anything, and Cas doesn’t expect it of him. If Dean went to a bar right now and picked someone up, it wouldn’t be Cas he felt he would be cheating, but the other party. Because the fact of the matter is, Dean doesn’t want to subject anyone else to _himself_. Not anymore.

Dean never exactly read his diary to his partners, but he never outright lied to them, either. Finding someone now (or, given the circumstances, _ever_ ,) would feel like a lie. He can’t inflict himself on another human being like that. Not after when what he did nine months ago couldn’t even be _considered_ human.

Sex, for Dean, has always been about heat and company; with Cas, it’s about solidarity. When Cas leaves behind bruises, or Dean draws blood, they don’t apologize to each other. It’s a reminder.

But this time, all Dean can think about is the cold. Cas is stroking him, and the circle of heat between his hand and Dean’s skin is heated, almost engorged with it.  His body is reacting in all the usual ways; the tremor in his thighs and the bitten back way he tries to cut off the sounds coming out of him; the way he pulses involuntarily, Cas purposely pressing every button he knows Dean has.

They know each other’s bodies so well by now that it doesn’t take long- Cas knows all the steps and Dean can reciprocate without even looking. He’s not sure he could explain- even to himself- what it’s like with Cas. There’s a misery in the air between them, choked with the knowledge of the entire reason they’re in this mess in the first place. There’s a coldness, too, separate to the one that raises gooseflesh on Dean’s arms. A necessary aloofness, because the last thing this arrangement needs is more complications.

And it’s that thought that has Dean rolling over to face Cas, whose back is now to him.

“I talked to Sam today,” he starts neutrally.

Cas doesn’t answer, which doesn’t surprise Dean. He doesn’t turn over and say, ‘oh?’ like someone would if they were in a real relationship. Dean only knows Cas is listening because they’ve done this dance a thousand times over the past six months, and at least some of the time, Cas proves he’s listening by adding tiny snippets to the conversation- usually a clipped answer to a yes or no question, if he’s feeling especially chatty.

“And he, um-” Dean hesitates, unsure of how to come at the question without seeming like he’s accusing anyone. He made up his mind to say something about it before realizing what he was going to say, which never seems to go well for him. “He asked about- _us_. Y’know. Like Sam does.”

The slightest stiffness creeps into Cas’ posture, and Dean wonders if it’s been too long- or hasn’t been long enough- that he still can’t take some perverted pleasure just from peaking Cas’ interest. Sometimes he feels like an owner trying to woo a particularly reticent cat to its back porch for milk in a saucer.

“And he said…” Dean trails off. “He said that you two have talked and that you told him-”

“-It was a lie,” Cas cuts in harshly, and Dean watches his back muscles tense up under his thin t-shirt. “You know what Sam thinks I am to you.”

 “Well I just-”

“I played the part, Dean,” Cas snaps, “I told him what he needed- or thinks he needed- to hear, okay?”

“Okay,” Dean backs off, “Okay, fine. Whatever.”

An uncomfortable, taut silence follows, as Cas starts pulling his jeans back on and pulling on a button up. He leaves the room without a word, which is par for the course, but there’s something heavier this time, something that’s never been there before.

As he listens to Cas bustle around the apartment, grabbing his keys and wallet and phone, Dean ruminates on something he said.

_You know what Sam thinks I am to you._

***

After Cas leaves, Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Of course, Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself regardless of where Cas is, so including him in the equation at all is kind of a moot point. Again, it all comes down to the solidarity, the brothers-in-arms mentality, even though they weren’t fighting for any kind of noble cause- just too much beer and too much history all coming to a head in the worst possible way.

He flips on the television, but what’s playing at four in the afternoon is even shittier than what’s on at four in the morning, if possible. He mindlessly flips through talk show after talk show, then flips the set off in disgust.

This apartment is giving him the creeps even more so than usual, and it’s not even dark out yet. He glances at the closet door- now long closed- and feels an uncomfortable swooping in his stomach. It’s a hazy, misty afternoon, the view from the living room window closer to pea soup than anything resembling normal weather.  Dean stands up and shoves open the rickety screen door to their balcony, hoping some air will clear his head. He goes for his pack of cigarettes that he always carries in the back pocket of his jeans, when he realizes he’s still wearing Cas’ sweatpants from earlier- more of an occupational hazard than anything else, especially since neither of them are very good at getting the laundry done on time, and Dean would rather wallow in his own dirt than someone else’s.

He turns around to start fighting with their shitty excuse for a door again to go retrieve them from the bedroom, when something moves behind the crosshatched screen and he almost stumbles backwards over the wet railing in shock.

_It’s just a mouse_ , he scolds himself, heart racing regardless. _What else can you expect from this shithole?_

Cautiously, he makes his way forward, the screen distorting his view of the living room. He strains his ears, trying to pick up on any kind of movement from the other side of the door, the dewiness of the late afternoon clinging to him like a second skin.

There’s something strange about the latticed screen in front of him, and the fog behind him. They’re in no way connected, but it doesn’t seem to matter. There’s _layers_ of it. Masses. It _hums_. It vibrates, filling his head with a kind of blurriness, a dazed white-out that makes his teeth feel fuzzy.

He puts his ear to the screen and feels a reverberation strong enough to tickle the eardrum on the opposite side of his head, but under it, he hears something else.

A scratching.

A furious, frenetic, terrified scratching; it’s bloodied fingernails and stubs of thumbs worn out from days and weeks and months of captivity, a frantic plea coupled with dark, vengeful thoughts.

Dean puts a hand to his head, trying to fight off the buzzing in his skull. He thinks he mumbles Cas’ name as he stumbles into the apartment, the door giving way at last, even though he doesn’t recall opening it.

That’s the thing about this place- the doors don’t behave as they should.

_The scratching- Where is it coming from?_

Dean really wants that smoke, but he finds himself starting towards the front closet again through no conscious thought of his own. Everything is still in the same place it was- that is, their apartment is still the exact same kind of mess it was when Dean went out for a smoke five minutes ago.

The only thing that’s different is that damn door. That fucking closet door is open again and Dean stares in horror at the absolute, shredded grid that stares resolutely back at him. It’s worse than it was before, the notches extending all the way to the top of the door, the occupant obviously growing more and more desperate as the hours trickle by.

Like the inevitable tolling of the Sunday morning church bells, Dean feels his eye drawn to the dark space of the closet- the wooden box they picked up at Goodwill half out of their minds nine months ago and it’s in the exact same place it’s been for the past six months. It’s the box they don’t acknowledge. It’s the box that only exists in the spaces between conversations, in those funny little blips of human speech where everyone pauses to take a breath at the same time.

Dean’s never gotten dressed so quickly in his life. He’s out of the apartment in thirty seconds, out of the building in sixty.

He wanders the streets of their dreary little city for as long as he can stand it, before he finds himself staring up at the neon sign of the bar Cas works at. It’s gotten dark, and the _open_ sign buzzes frantically at him, beckoning him, a respite from the cold that’s settled heavily in every crease of his jacket and every line on his face.

It’s a lie, of course. As soon as Dean walks into that bar, smoke clouds around his head and he shivers, because the cold never really leaves him. Especially not when Cas is around.

He’s not behind the bar, though. Oh, Dean can feel him in the building, but he’s not behind the bar. In his place is a dark haired girl who looks like exhaled smoke, blackness in her eyes and a quirked smirk on her lips. Dean thinks her name is Ruby, but he’s not sure.

He storms up to her, his fear having melted into anger, probably not looking like the most promising of customers. He feels it swirling inside him, this rage that’s built up over the last couple of hours, the hurricane perfectly posed to break over dry land.

Ruby regards him warily, obviously used to patrons demanding things of her.

“Cas,” Dean grounds out, both hands flat on the bar. “I need to talk to Castiel.”

Ruby’s expression doesn’t change, but she inclines her head.

“Out back,” she says, clipped. “On his smoke break.”

Without a word, Dean takes his leave. He doesn’t stop to consider the fact that Cas hasn’t smoked a cigarette since the night he almost ruined everything. He just crashes through the backdoor, looks both ways and finds Cas leaning coolly against the wall, taking a long drag off a smoke he probably bummed from Ruby. When he notices Dean, he raises an eyebrow almost imperceptibly as he says, “You’re not supposed to be here, Dean.”

“Like hell I’m not,” Dean growls, and shoves Cas up against the wall. He feels the lit cigarette swipe his arm with the jarring movement, and winces as his forearm burns at the contact. Cas just stares him, calm as ever, dropping the butt and stubbing it out with the ball of his foot.

“The _bar_ , Dean,” Cas clarifies, “You’re not supposed to be near the bar.”

Dean shoves Cas’ shoulders back, “You think I give a shit about that right now?” he seethes, “You think that matters?”

“Of course,” Cas says simply, putting a palm flat on Dean’s elbow, forcing his arm to bend until he lets go of him and steps back with a hiss. He never told Dean how he learned to do it, but Dean’s pretty sure he knows. Cas doesn’t exactly come from the most loving of families.

Dean covers his face with his hands, speaking through his fingers.

“I knew something was wrong with that place,” he mumbles, feeling the fight drain out of him all at once, “Of course I knew.” His voice is gravel, every word a sorrowful lament, “It’s _you_ , Cas,” Dean moans, “ _You’re_ the one haunting me, and I can’t- I can’t-”

He turns his back to the wall and slides down it, the ground cold and damp, seeping into him. He hugs his knees, lazily cast out in front of him. “The box,” he whispers, “Oh, god, Cas, we need to get rid of that box.”

Confusion flits across Cas’ face as he stares down at Dean.

“Dean…” he says slowly, “What box?”

Dean raises his head.

“’What box’?” he repeats, voice growing louder again, “What _fucking_ box, Cas?! Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I have… no idea what you’re talking about, Dean.” As if making an impulsive decision, Cas crouches beside Dean, close enough that goosebumps raise on Dean’s arms.

“The box,” Dean says, lower again, desperate. “The box with _his_ … coat.”

Cas shakes his head, properly sitting down this time.

“No,” he says, “Dean, we didn’t keep anything from that night. You especially know that. _You_ were the one who-”

“I know,” Dean snaps, then faults, “Or maybe I don’t.” He looks at Cas, wets his lips nervously, “There’s a box there, Cas. And whatever’s in the box wants to get out.”

Cas’ stoic expression cracks minutely as he properly slumps against the wall next to Dean, defeated.

“I don’t know what to say,” he says, “There’s no box.”

“There is.”

“There’s not.”

“You’re afraid,” Dean says, “Of the closet.” He smiles, tired. “Because monsters live in it.”

“If what you say is in that box is actually in that box,” Cas says resignedly, “Then I’m right.”

Dean’s hollow smile falters, and he brings a shaky hand up to rub his forehead.

“I wasn’t lying,” he says, “It doesn’t matter what’s going on. You’re still the ghost I’m worried about. You’re still the reason I wake up in the middle of the night- or don’t go to sleep at all.”

Cas stares ahead at the brick wall opposite, his mouth a straight line.

“Did you bring your cigarettes?” he asks roughly, even though he literally just finished one, still not meeting Dean’s eye.

Dean shakes his head, and Cas interlocks his fingers, like he needs something to do with his hands so he can focus on something other than this conversation.

“Do you think we’re friends?” Cas asks the wall in front of them, haphazardly changing the subject like Dean’s known him to do, “I mean, if we had met under normal circumstances, like normal friends do- do you think we’d be friends?”

Dean scrapes a nail against the knee of his jeans as he says, “You don’t have any friends.” He glances at Cas warily, “I had friends, now I don’t.” His voice is incredibly muted as he continues, defeated, “All we have now is each other.”

Cas sighs.

“That’s so fucked up,” he says, and Dean pointedly looks away when he realizes Cas’ voice is wobbling, primed to tip over the edge at any minute. “It’s incredible how lonely being a terrible person can be.”

This is the most emotion Dean’s seen from Cas since that night, and all he can find it in himself to say in response is, “I know the feeling.”

***

A few weeks go by with no further incidents. Dean and Cas carefully avoid the closet and any discussion thereof. Dean gets about two hours of sleep each night of he’s lucky, and wonders how long he can keep it up before he falls asleep on some train tracks and can end it all while unconscious. He wants to say that he’s suffered enough, but he’s not sure it’ll ever be enough.

Dean knows neither he nor Cas is under suspicion, but regardless, when Cas’ aloof sister calls with more questions, he feels like he just swallowed a tip jar.

From what Dean’s heard of Anna, the incident itself doesn’t matter- she doesn’t care who got hurt, she just wants to know what the hell happened and if they’re coming after her next.

“Nine months ago, Cas!” Dean can hear her saying on the other line, “Without a trace! What if it’s a family thing, what if someone has it out for us?”

“It’s not, and they don’t,” Cas says, cool as a cucumber.

“How can you _know_?”

“Anna,” Cas rubs the bridge of his nose in the way he picked up from Dean, “You’ve got to relax. He’s gone, okay? It’s almost been a year.”

There’s a silence, and then Dean has to strain to hear the much quieter, “Well, good riddance. I hope he’s frying in hell right now, the bastard.”

_Right alongside us_ , Dean thinks.

When he hears Anna ask, _how’s Dean doing?_ He knows to make his swift exit. Prying yet well-meaning siblings are something he’s already very familiar with. At least he’s managed to keep the sibling-in-law stuff confined to just Cas and Sam so far. He’s never even exchanged words with Anna, let alone anyone else from Cas’ fucked up, extended family. (Extended family minus one, now, but it doesn’t make their numbers any less startling.)

The last thing he hears before he shuts himself in their bedroom is Cas talking about how great Dean is, and it makes his head fuzz out in the most unpleasant of ways.

Twenty minutes later, Cas walks in, his face stoic and determined.

“Show me the box,” he says, even though they haven’t even mentioned the word in days.

Dean puts down the book he hadn’t been reading.

“Why now?”

Something flits across Cas’ face, a vulnerability that Dean knows usually lurks somewhere deep beneath the exterior.

“I need to know it’s not real,” he confesses, “When Anna calls- since she’s the only one who does- it makes it real.”

Dean stands up, a surprising and vaguely unwelcome sympathy for Cas stirring in his gut.

“It was real, Cas,” he says slowly, “It _is_ real.”

Vulnerability gives way to annoyance, and Cas’ eyes flash defensively.

“I know _it’s_ real,” he says coldly, “But the box isn’t. I want to see for myself.”

Dean’s pretty much accepted the existence of the box that shouldn’t exist by now. For all intents and purposes, he can’t remember anything about it, even though he also remembers _everything_ about it.

Cas leads the way down the hall and to the front door, and it’s almost funny how normal it is. It’s just a closet, for Christ’s sake, and they’re staring at it like it has teeth. They glance from the closet to each other, and then Cas rolls his eyes and yanks open the door.

Immediately, Dean’s gaze is drawn to the dark corner of the closet they never bothered to fill, only to find the same wooden box, just as unassuming as it was the first and last time Dean saw it a couple weeks ago.

Cas is staring at the same spot, since, logistically, that corner is the only place in this broom cupboard they could fit something of that size. He glances at Dean, unsurprised, but not without relief.

“There’s nothing there,” he says.

Dean stares at Cas, and then stares at the box again. It’s right there.

“There’s no box,” Cas says.

Dean steps forward and drags the reluctant box out of the closet, the bottom scraping unpleasantly against the floor. He leaves it at Cas’ feet, looking pointedly down at it.

“You mean the box that I just pulled out of the closet that’s sitting right in front of you?” Dean asks, “That box?”

Cas looks down, and then back up.

“You’re the only thing in front of me right now,” Cas says, brow slightly furrowed. “Dean, are you telling me that you think you just pulled a box containing the blood drenched coat of my dead brother out of our front closet because we were the ones who put it there?”

Dean looks at the box. He bends down and knocks on the top of it- it’s soft pine, a light cedar color and badly sanded. He pricks his finger on a stray sliver and winces.

“I just knocked on it,” Dean says.

“You didn’t do anything, Dean.” Cas is looking legitimately concerned now, which throws Dean off more than whatever issue they’re currently having with the box.

“Cas, it’s right-” Dean’s holding up his hand, and stops midsentence when he catches the pinprick of blood running down his palm. He stares at his palm, feeling Cas’ gaze follow his own.

“The sliver,” he says, awed. “I just pricked my finger on the box.”

“That’s…” Cas takes Dean’s hand into his own, examining the blood. He swipes a finger through it and holds it up in front of his face. “Impossible.”

“You were right here,” Dean confirms, “There was nothing else I could have caught it on.”

Dean’s never had the pleasure of seeing Cas’ face go quite so skewed, and despite the somewhat dire circumstances, he can feel his face distort to try and hide his amusement.

His amusement is short lived, however, when Cas fixes him with an exceptionally icy stare.

“What the hell is going on,” he says flatly.

Any dregs of levity slip away as Dean shrugs helplessly, shoving the box back into the closet with his heel. Cas watches Dean’s foot apprehensively, gaze swivelling.

“You don’t remember this box at all?” Dean asks, closing the door and leaning against it, arms crossed. Cas, in turn, props his hip against the kitchen counter and rests a palm on his thigh.

“No,” he says, “But you do?”

“I…” Dean licks his lips and tries to focus, but the memories are hazy, feeling more like a dream that’s melting away in the light of day as opposed to any kind of legitimate reality. “I don’t know,” he finishes lamely. “It’s all… muddled.”

Cas’ body language visibly hardens as he says, “It’s been a couple weeks, and the only reason this happened is because I asked to see the box. I say ignoring it is still our best option.”

Dean bites his tongue to keep from snapping, but his words come out harsh, regardless.

“Because ignoring it has done us _so_ much good up to this point,” he says bitterly, and Cas’ eyes flash. He just crashed through the crime scene without a moment’s notice, and Cas is nothing if not a stickler for his own personal brand of red tape.

Cas pushes off the counter and takes a predatory step towards Dean.

“You want to run that by me again?” he asks, eyes narrowed to slits, stance aggressive.

“I’m saying,” Dean says, and the rage comes faster every time now, like some sort of volcano has taken up residence in his chest and won’t be done devastating the island until everything is grey and ashen, “That the past nine months, that everything that’s going on now- we’re done, Cas. I don’t know if we’re cracking or what, but this isn’t gonna end well.”

“Did we really enter into this agreement with the notion that things would turn out _well_?” Cas asks. “From my end, it was pure necessity that forced our hand.” He takes another small step forward, the threat softer in his voice now, but no less intense. “And I believe the terms of the agreement were that we would talk about it as little as possible, which you’ve reneged on time and time again.”

“Because we killed a man, Cas!” It comes out much, much louder than Dean had intended, and they both freeze for a moment, utterly still, as if they could hear the terrified gasp from the woman who lives downstairs or the young couple across the hall. A strange, high pitched whining fills Dean’s ears, the ambient noises of the day- traffic on the street below, pipes gurgling, the ticking of the analog clock- melting away, only to be replaced by a noise Dean can only think to describe as a dog whistle, but fissured out, like someone stuffed it into cotton and then pulled it apart.

Cas’ face is absolutely stormy, but Dean’s savvy enough by now to watch the hurt spread beneath the hard planes of his expression. It seeps into every line, every curl of the lips.

“Are you even buying your own press anymore, Cas?” Dean asks softly. “Because I sure as hell ain’t. It’s-” he looks away, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. “It’s eating me up inside, man, whether a fucking haunted jacket is sitting inside that closet or not.”

Dean only looks up at the sound of the front door closing, Cas’ footsteps echoing down the hall.

***

Dean stares into the fridge, begging the old alcohol shelf to magically refill itself, and hating himself for it every second.

It’s not like the drunk almost-911 call was why Dean needed to stop drinking. In fact, sometimes he regrets that that call never went through. He could have sobered up in prison and saved himself a hell of a lot of misery, even if the guilt would still cling to him faster than the bite of a poisonous snake.

His drinking fucked up a lot of things, and it’s during the late, insomnia induced infomercial kicks that Dean can sometimes even begin to justify that night nine months ago. But everything else is a complete shit show- the way Dean treated Sam, the people he hurt and the lives he made immeasurably more difficult; none of that is something Dean can just rationalize to himself, and it makes him sick to his stomach that _murder_ seems to be the most justifiable sin he’s indulged in in the past couple years.

In fact, he probably feels more guilty about not feeling overly guilty than anything else—that, and the somewhat rational yet irrational anger that’s always simmering away in his gut at both himself and Cas.

But then again, no matter the station or reputation of the man they killed, they killed a man, regardless. Someone is dead because of him.

_If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed Cas_ , is often a thought that floats uselessly through his mind, because he can never be _sure_. Cas was losing that fight, definitely, his face swollen and blood trickling out the corner of his mouth and from a cut at his hairline, and Dean- unsurprisingly, drunk at the time, the last late-nighter to leave the bar- had come upon them a couple alleyways along, responding via instinct- help out the little guy. Or in this case, the losing guy, because as it turned out, Cas was the taller of the two, but younger, and not near as blood thirsty as his brother, although that changed quickly enough once Dean showed up.

He remembers shouting something from the mouth of the alley, although he can’t remember what. He assumes something along the lines of telling Cas’ brother to knock it the hell off, although at the time, he had no idea who either of them were, let alone that they were related. Coming from a fairly broken family himself, even Dean could never have expected such black, vile hatred to cloud the air between siblings.

That night, however, the rage was thick enough in the air that Dean choked on it as his warning was ignored, and he barrelled down the alley, slamming into the man still attempting to turn Cas’ face to pulp. The alcohol had stripped him of his inhibitions, making him act irrationally, but it also left him pulling no punches as he followed Cas’ brother down, crushing his clumsy knuckles into the man’s face as quickly as he could. He just thought of it as another bar brawl, and he was ready to go a couple rounds of bare knuckles, hopped up and agitated.

It was only when Cas finally re-entered the fray that things really took a turn for the worst.

Usually, Dean liked to go toe to toe- that is, fair numbers. One against one, two against two, etc. He was never into teaming up all one guy, but that night was different. Cas’ brother was like a wild animal who needed to be wrestled into its cage, and Dean and Cas- who should have acted as the ones to tame the beast- instead became beasts themselves.

Cas’ brother got in his own fair share of blows, but in the end, two drunk men will always beat one. By the time the dust had finally settled, it was only the two drunk men left, and a body.

The alley was quiet for maybe a solid thirty seconds, the realization of what they’d done finally sinking in. And then Cas said his brother’s name, frighteningly quiet. He collapsed to his knees and stared in horror at the body, at his brother.

Cas stared at the body, and Dean stared at Cas. To this day, he doesn’t know what got him in the end, whether it was some terrible, twisted kind of sympathy, or just outright pity, but he couldn’t see a man as broken as Cas have to pay for what just happened. Maybe it was his paternal instinct kicking in again after being so long out of use since Sam took off. Whatever it was, the first words out of Dean’s half drunk mouth to Cas- before they even knew each other’s names- were, “We have to get rid of it.”

As out of his head as he was, Cas still had the fortitude to look over his shoulder and regard Dean with hostile eyes.

“ _It_?” he choked, his voice a horrifying combination of sorrow and outrage.

“I-”

It started to rain before Dean could finish his sentence, hard enough that in moments, he could barely blink fast enough to keep the water out of his eyes. Cas turned to the side and retched, just missing his brother’s shoes by inches.

“I can’t…” He’d mumbled, almost too quiet for Dean to hear over the rain. Dean will never be sure, thanks to the sudden downpour, but he thinks Cas was sobbing by then, destitute and unbearably lost.

His own mind, clouded as it was, was careening between terrified speechlessness and sputtering in shock, but he tucked it away, because there was a man that looked like a big black hole had opened in the middle of his chest and it was attempting to suck him down, down, down.

Dean put a hand on Cas’ shoulder.

“The rain will wash the rest away,” he had said robotically, a wall having slammed down between the emotion centers of his brain and the logical, “We just have to deal with… with the body.”

At that, Cas stood up and turned fully around to face Dean, the rain absolutely pummelling down between them, hitting the ground hard enough that every drop splashed back up, shattered.

“How can you- how can you…” The first came out full of rage, naming Dean an absolute betrayal of the decency of humanity, while the second broke completely, Cas with it. He crumpled onto the ground again, his hands in his hair and shaking, wordless.

A car rolled by the alley, sickly yellow headlights highlighting the scene for only seconds before continuing on, completely oblivious. Dean’s heart stopped in his chest, and then started thumping double time. The alcohol wasn’t doing him any favors either, although the deluge was doing its best to sober him up.

“You just… stay here,” Dean told Cas, although by that time, Cas had completely shrunk into himself, sitting desolately on the pavement, a couple steps away from his brother. “I’ll handle it.”

The adrenaline was still surging through him and the body was shorter and slighter than Dean, which allowed him to swing it over his shoulder in the same way as a fireman would, although the last thing he was doing was saving someone’s life. He carried it down to the opposite entrance of the alley, the man’s feet thumping lifelessly against his ribcage. _Oh god, don’t think about that_.

The bar sat just off the boardwalk, and it hardly took a moment’s thought from Dean to decide what to do. All he had to do was toss- the storm and the currents would do the rest.

The sky had turned a churlish black by this point, and the waves angrily pounded against the docks as Dean made his way to the very end, keeping a wary eye on the empty street behind him. It was unlikely anyone would be out at this hour, in this weather, and Dean really had no idea what he would if he saw someone, but he kept an eye out, regardless.

He didn’t allow himself to feel anything as he tossed the body into the water and watched it get claimed by the black, angry ocean. Eventually, the pale face disappeared beneath the waves, and Dean, refusing to linger, refusing to _think_ , turned away. As he walked back towards the pier, a great gust of wind caught his jacket and almost threw him into the water alongside the body, which would have been justice enough, perhaps, but he managed to right himself at the last minute, to the vast disappointment of all karmic retribution out there.

He wasn’t surprised to find Cas where he had left him, but he _was_ surprised to find a completely different man standing in place of the one he had left. This Cas- this man, as Dean still didn’t know his name at this point- stood beneath the rain as if he didn’t even notice it, face completely blank. In fact, Cas was so apathetic that, for a moment, Dean thought it _was_ a different person.

“Why did you do that for me?” he asked smoothly, like he was inquiring about the wine list at a restaurant. “You’ve only implicated yourself.”

“I…” Dean couldn’t answer. This man was so different than the one from just minutes ago that he was having a hard time finding his own tongue. He just threw a body into the ocean because he felt compelled to help the helpless, but what was he supposed to do when the helpless obviously _wasn’t helpless_?

“Did you play me?” Dean finally asked numbly, “Because you wanted someone else to do your dirty work?”

Cas hadn’t answered, but at the time, Dean thought that had been answer enough. He believed for weeks that Cas had tricked him, had played on his sympathies to get him to dispose of the body. He had felt manipulated and used for a long time, before he came to realize that the act _was_ the act. There was no grand conspiracy. There were no mind games. Cas murdered his brother in a fight about something he still won’t explain to Dean, and Dean had happened on it and done what he had done. He can’t even describe it as help anymore, as much as he wants to believe it was justified because Cas was in immediate danger. He’ll never know for sure because he was piss drunk and pissed off and already looking for a fight, because until he met Cas, that was how he lived his life.

They had danced around each other for the next three months, after the initial attempt at a _never contact me again_ relationship. Dean started losing sleep. He started getting headaches and walking around like something was trying to claw its way out of his gut- which, of course, it was. A confession, that is. It was especially bad in the initial weeks when the memories were still playing relentlessly in his head, over and over.

Now, all he sees when he closes his eyes, is static. White noise. It’s like his entire being has gone off the air, hanging in purgatory until the matter is resolved, one way or another.

One night, when he was absolutely smashed, he practically fell into the door of the bar where Cas worked. Cas took it upon himself to toss the overly-drunk, waving the bouncer off hastily.

“What the fuck are you _doing_?” he had hissed, once they were outside and out of the way.

“I’m drowning my sorrows,” Dean has responded, gesturing sloppily. His tongue was lazy and at least now he had an excuse to drink. “After all, we did kill-”

Cas had him shoved against the nearest wall so fast it made Dean’s head spin unpleasantly.

“Don’t,” Cas warned dangerously, his eyes narrowed. He had both his hands gripping Dean’s shoulders. “Do not.”

Dean had spent the last three months almost constantly drunk, doing his best to forget- or at least, dim- the memories of that night. He tried to focus on the most lewd thing he could think of, because it was easier than looking at Cas and being reminded of why they knew each other in the first place, and at the moment, the lewdest pair of things were Cas’ lips-- too close to his own. Dean shivered, because back then, Cas was even colder. Maybe it was the cool night air, but Dean, even now, doesn’t believe it.

In an alleyway similar to the one they had murdered a man in, Dean kissed Cas.

In an alleyway similar to the one they had murdered a man in, Cas kissed back.

There was no warmth. If anything, it was a kiss of solidarity. It reminded Dean that the only connection he had to this man was that they had the same blood on their hands.

And yet, like how so many things seem to happen, they chose attachment over what they both believed they deserved, because they’re mud-born, base creatures, and more afraid of the black void of aloneness and guilt than either of them would ever care to admit.

Dean grimaces as the empty shelf continues to remain exactly that. Whatever is going on in their apartment, whatever now lives in the in-between spaces, obviously doesn’t see fit to even conjure up some fake beer. For that matter, their entire fridge is looking pretty sparse, and while it’s not exactly new territory for them, Dean sighs inwardly as he contemplates dealing with the hassle of grocery shopping, or just waiting it out until either he or Cas finally snaps and calls in for takeout- again.

His decision making process is interrupted, however, when the front door slams open uncharacteristically forcefully, and Cas half-stumbles, half-falls into the entryway.

“Dean,” he slurs, obviously drunk, lurching towards the kitchen and catching himself on the wall, accidentally hitting the light switch there and casting them into darkness. “Dean,” he says again, and Dean can smell it from here, the alcohol burning its way out of Cas.

“Cas…” Dean owes Cas nothing and Cas owes Dean nothing, but the betrayal cuts through him, regardless. He may not have an AA chip to prove his worth, but even he knows what a trigger is. “Cas, what the fuck are you doing?”

Cas smiles sloppily at him and starts forward, pushing himself off the wall to wobbly stand right in front of Dean, who dutifully cups Cas’ elbow to steady him.

“’I’m drowning my sorrows,’” Cas quotes at him, the bitterness in his voice harsh and sharp as a fresh razor.

“Cas, I can’t believe you would do this,” he wants to add _to me_ , as if he’s some kind of exception, but holds his tongue.

Dean wonders how disgusting it is, that, given the chance, he would suck every last particle of alcohol out of Cas’ reeking breath. He would kiss Cas right now just so he could taste some second hand liquor, like a baby bird whose mother regurgitates its meals for it.

_God, I’m so addicted_ , he thinks, not for the first time. The initial _I can stop whenever I want_ bullshit seems laughable now.

Cas blinks dumbly at him, as if he’s just realizing something for the first time.

“Jesus,” he says, taking a shaky step away from Dean. He stares at Dean, more frightened than Dean’s ever seen him. His hair is askew and his shirt is rumpled, his jacket obviously lost somewhere along the way. His eyes are round, practically perfect circles. “Jesus,” he says again, and his face visibly drains of color, leaving it wan and looking like melted vanilla ice cream.

“Cas-” But before he can get the sentence out, Cas throws himself towards the sink, vomiting loudly. His shoulders lurch and shake, his knees looking like they’re about to go out from under him.

“ _Cas_.” Despite himself, Dean inches towards the sink, but Cas thrusts a hand out, stopping him.

“Just get the fuck out of here, Dean,” Cas begs, and Dean knows he’s really feeling ill when he adds, “ _Please_.”

Dean takes a hesitant step back, eyes trained on the way Cas’ shoulder blades are heaving.

“Fuck,” Cas whispers, quietly enough that Dean can barely hear. “ _Fuck_.”

Dean starts to walk away for both of their sakes when Cas speaks again, this time low and full of regret.

“Why did you have to do it?” he asks without turning around, his voice cracking; Dean’s not even sure Cas knows if he’s left yet or not. “Why would you let me drag you into this?” His hands are gripping the lip of the sink tight enough to turn his knuckles white, and the smell of vomit has pervaded the kitchen. His head hangs listlessly over the sink, and his shoulders have started to shake again, but Dean doesn’t think it’s from the booze this time. “Why did you save me?” he whispers, hiccoughing at the end. He turns, and though there’s a cacophony of emotions swirling through him at the moment, Cas’ expression cuts right through it all, and he feels it slice him right across the chest.  

That’s a good question. Dean’s walked right by his fair share of bar fights; has paid them less than a glance. Once upon a time, he was the kind of guy who tried to do what was right, but he thinks that time has long since passed. Now, he’s just trying to survive as his guilt continues to drag him further out to sea, drowning him under the waves like he drowned Cas’ brother.

He pictures Cas in that alley, half beaten to a pulp, and it twists the knife even harder now that Dean knows it was done at the hands of someone Cas, at one point or another, must have cared for.  But it still doesn’t answer the question.

“I don’t know,” he admits faintly.

Cas shakes his head, the sadness emanating off him like the glow of an incandescent light bulb. It burns hard at his core.

“Someone was going to get to him eventually,” Cas whispers, “He pissed a lot of people off. It didn’t have to be us-” he pauses, swallows. “It didn’t have to be _me_ ,” he corrects.

It would be so easy for Dean to nod and agree and say, _exactly_. _You could have held back_. _You could have stopped._ But he doesn’t. Because Cas may have delivered the final blow, but Dean’s not naïve enough to put it all on his shoulders, however much he may sometimes want to- after all, for there to be a final blow, there has to be a first, and a second, and a third…

And also someone to dump the body in the ocean.

If Dean hadn’t come along, Cas probably would have sat with that body until an actual Good Samaritan showed up and called the police and this whole ugly business would have been over and done with, Dean none the wiser. If Dean had left the bar earlier, if Dean hadn’t gone to the bar at all, if Dean wasn’t an alcoholic… the ifs can get as far-fetched as they want, but it doesn’t change the facts. It doesn’t change anything.

“It wasn’t just you,” Dean confesses lowly, “Of course it wasn’t just you, Cas.” He’s been so angry at Cas for so long, afraid to own up to his part in it. It’s terrifying that he has that kind of darkness in himself, that he can do the things he’s done.

He thinks, maybe, he’s so angry at Cas because Cas, however unknowingly, put him in a situation where something deeply buried in him came screaming to the surface, bloodthirsty and downright _bad_. Primal. Even worse, he dug it out of himself and willingly gave it free reign. It was _his_ hands that smashed into that face, over and over. It was _his_ hands that carried that body down the pier and dropped it into the heaving, hungry ocean.

It’s _his_ hands that blindly reach forward, through the stench of vomit and alcohol, to find an anchor, and it’s _Cas_ ’ hands that finally pull him from the waves. He collapses into Dean’s arms, and yet, somehow, he’s the one holding Dean up. The shoulder of his t-shirt is already wet with tears and sweat, and Dean buries his face in Cas’ neck, trying to hold back the flood himself.

He’s been fighting Cas for so long he’s forgotten what it actually feels like to have a real, live person embracing him. Dean knows it’s only various bodily fluids, but it’s like Cas is melting in his arms, the ice and snow finally giving way to the warm, excruciating center. He presses his forehead to Cas’, closing his eyes and attempting to have one, single moment of peace amidst the sour smelling kitchen.

“I don’t think this is going to hold,” Cas admits quietly, “When I sober up I don’t think I’ll be able to do…” he lays a shaky palm on Dean’s cheek, and to Dean’s surprise, it’s soft. He doesn’t remember Cas ever being softbefore.

“You’re so far inside yourself,” Dean mutters, “It scares the shit out of me sometimes, you know that?”

“Defense mechanism,” Cas mumbles mushily, and Dean can tell that he’s starting to nod off. “Especially around you.”

Dean blinks, pulling away slightly so he can look directly at Cas.

“What?”

Cas’ eyelids are fluttering, and Dean tries to remember that he’s dealing with an exceptionally drunk person.

“Cas,” he says, “Cas, what are you talking about?”

But Cas has gone limp in his arms, passed out. Dean sighs, and half drags him back to their bedroom. He watches the rise and fall of Cas’ chest for a few moments. He should have made him take some pain killers and drink some water. Cas is going to have a hell of a hangover tomorrow. The best he can do is grab him a glass from the kitchen and leave it on his nightstand along with a couple Tylenol.

As he’s returning to their bedroom, he casts the closet a cagey look. If there really is something in there, it just watched their entire exchange.

***

II.

Indeed, Cas wakes up with a massive hangover, and spends at least the first twenty minutes of his first waking hour dry heaving in the bathroom. Dean listens in sympathy; he’s spent his fair share of mornings in the exact same position.

Eventually, Cas emerges from the bathroom, looking pale and shaky. Dean, drinking coffee on the couch, raises his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He took what Cas said last night seriously—if Cas wanted to pretend like that conversation never happened, then so be it. Nothing good would come out of Dean bringing it up this early, anyway.

Cas doesn’t say anything and doesn’t look at Dean. He wanders around for a moment, as if unsure what to do with himself. Dean had cleaned up after Cas last night, spraying enough air freshener to stop a stray spider scuttling across their counter in its path, so Dean figures he’s done his job.

Cas, however, doesn’t angle towards the kitchen. Instead, he stares at the mail on the end table by the door that Dean hasn’t bothered to sort through yet.

“I’m sorry,” he says neutrally, starting at the top envelope in a small stack. “Last night was inexcusable.”

Dean takes a sip of his coffee. It _was_ inexcusable, actually, but he doesn’t say that.

“Do you remember everything?” he asks, feigning disinterest. The territory they traversed last night was new and almost frightening in its own way; Dean won’t push, and Cas doesn’t want him to.

Cas picks up the mail and absent-mindedly puts a hand on his most assuredly upset stomach.

“Yes.”

He starts flipping through the stack.

“Dean, you should know-” he begins, but stops mid-sentence, staring in abject horror at what looks like an unassuming off-white envelope. Dean stands up immediately.

“What?”

Cas doesn’t say anything, his eyes fixed on the envelope. His mouth has fallen open slightly, and if possible, he looks sicker.

“Cas, _what_?!”

Dean leaves his coffee on the table and strides over, reading the envelope over Cas’ shoulder. His eyes widen at the return address.

“Holy shit,” he marvels morbidly.

Cas robotically turns the envelope over and methodically opens it, pulling the thick, most likely expensive card stock out.

It takes Dean a second to parse out the overly ornate handwriting, but Cas reads it aloud, saving him the trouble.

“It’s an invitation,” Cas says faintly, his face milk white. “My father’s inviting us to dinner.”

***

Dean doesn’t know Cas’ family at all. The only live member he knows is Anna, and only because she calls once in a blue moon. He’s never even talked to her.

Hell, he doesn’t even know how many siblings Cas has, or, had.   

Cas puts the invitation down gently, staring hard past it.

“I’m going,” he says. “I’ll make an excuse for you if you wish, but I’m going.”

Dean’s at a complete loss.

“Cas, why would you-”

“I’m going.” Despite the hangover, Cas gives him a steely glare.

Dean also doesn’t know much about Cas’ family at all. Cas rarely talks about them, and when he does, it’s with the same cool, detached tone he uses for everything else.

But he can guess.  He knows what it’s like to have a general instead of a father, and Cas is every bit the soldier.

Dean thinks about their conversation last night, about the façade that fell to pieces.

“I-” Dean licks his lips. “Yeah. I’ll go.”

Cas blinks at that.

“Why?” he asks, almost suspiciously. Dean almost laughs. Yeah, why would a supposed significant other want to go and support the other significant other at a family function. Why on earth.

“Because I’m sure the food is gonna be better than the ramen noodles we’ve been living off the last week,” Dean says glibly, already moving away.

Cas looks half-bewildered.

“Okay,” he says, unsurely. “Thank you. I guess.”

***

“What’s the, um…” Two weeks later, and Dean’s fiddling around with his tie in the mirror as Cas attempts to flatten his hair with a comb. He waves his hand around as he searches for the word, “…Protocol, for this thing?”

“Protocol for what?” Cas asks, fighting a losing battle with the comb.

“Me and you,” Dean clarifies. “Y’know, the whole ‘I’m a guy, you’re a guy’ thing.”

“Oh.” Cas puts down the comb, defeated, and moves behind Dean, knocking his hands out of the way as he ties the tie himself. Dean watches himself frown in the mirror, because Cas knows he knows how to tie his own damn tie. There’s been a strange energy to Cas these past few weeks, a tightness, a jerkiness in him that Dean has to assume is to do with tonight’s dinner.

Cas ties a perfect tie, and continues as he steps away, “This is a bridge I crossed with him a long time ago, Dean. He won’t say anything.”

It’s weird that this is the thing Dean’s worrying about, since in a couple hours he’ll be sitting across from a family that’s now missing one member in part because of him. He figures he’s compartmentalizing to save himself the inevitable breakdown.

 Dean nods, starting to feel his stomach rumble nervously. The past couple weeks have been quiet in the apartment, but Dean’s mind has been in overdrive, his insomnia kicking in even worse than normal. The skin around his eyes feels pulled tight, and as he looks at himself in the mirror- _really_ looks at himself- he has to admit, he looks like crap. Everyone’s complexion in this city is sallow, but Dean feels like his face has sunken, his eyes too dark and his cheeks too gaunt. His bargain basement slacks and button up fit well enough, but feel like cardboard, making his movements stiff and awkward.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Dean says as he buttons a cuff.

Across the room, Cas shrugs neutrally.

“It’s not,” he says coolly, “But we’ve already RSVP’d. We have to go.”

Dean wants to snap and say, _who the fuck cares_? But he swallows past it. He said he’d go, so he’s going.

“Any last minute advice?” he asks instead, as they head into the front hall. Their formal jackets are hanging in the closet, and he eyes it apprehensively as Cas turns to him.

“Don’t speak unless spoken to.”

Dean nods.

“Right.”

They stare in silence at the closet, and Dean feels the back of his neck start to tingle, like someone’s watching him.

“Fuck,” he says, and by the look on his face, Cas agrees.

Dean takes a deep breath, and steps forward, yanking the door open.

He sorts through the jackets quickly. They don’t keep their everyday coats in here anymore- those Dean has resigned to just throwing over the back of whatever chair is available- but they still have enough crap in here that Dean has to search for them. He stubbornly refuses to glance at where the pine box might or might not be.

Nothing happens for the first few seconds, and Dean thinks he’s in the clear until he feels the fillings at the back of his mouth start to tingle, a low level vibration that reverberates through his skull. He swears and holds a hand to his jaw as he continues to look.

“Dean,” Cas says firmly from behind him, “Just leave it.”

“I’m fine,” Dean grits out, and it’s like he can hear the words in his teeth. The tendons behind his eyes suddenly feel strangely buoyant.

He finds Cas’ jacket and practically rips it off its hanger, thrusting it behind him without looking. Cas takes it. Dean sees his own and grabs it, but the muscles in his hands go fuzzy at the same moment, causing him to drop it on the floor of the closet.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas snaps, his voice tight, “Fucking forget it.”

“ _I’ve got it_ ,” Dean snaps in kind, reaching down to grab it. He has a fistful of fabric in his hand and is just about to stand up when he notices a pair of shoes sitting against the back of the closet that he’s never seen before. Perhaps inevitably, his eyes follow the line, and he almost falls back in shock when he realizes that someone’s currently _wearing_ the shoes, concealed by all the coats.

“Holy fuck,” he gasps out and stumbles back, only stopping when he runs into Cas.

“What?” Cas asks, his face white, “What?!”

But Dean ignores him, shaking him off and immediately marching back to the closet and shoving all the coats to one side, revealing… nothing.

“No,” Dean mutters, bending down to look for the shoes, which are, of course, gone. “No,” he says again, checking between all the coats frantically. His palms are clammy. He turns around desperately, pointing at the closet. “There was someone _in_ there, Cas, I just fucking saw them! Standing behind the coats!” He puts both hands on his face and groans loudly, turning away from the closet. “Fuck. _Fuck_!”

He hears Cas start ruffling through the coats behind him.

“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he informs Dean.

Dean swallows hard and turns back around. He maneuvers Cas out of the way and checks the corner of the closet, determined to get _some_ kind of validation. His mouth still feels strange, like he’s been injected with novocaine.

There’s no box. The dark corner is just that- a dark corner.

Dean feels his knees go weak, and he stares at the empty corner for at least ten seconds before there’s a sharp intake of breath behind him. He spins around to see Cas staring at something in the living room. He follows his gaze, although he really doesn’t have to. The box sits on the coffee table, innocuous even in the washed out moonlight, the whorls in the wood contorting in Dean’s eyes to resemble a mocking, malevolent face.

“I assume this is the box you were talking about a couple weeks ago,” Cas says faintly.

Dean nods grimly.

“I don’t think the monster lives in the closet anymore,” he says gravely.

***

As if Dean wasn’t already nervous enough for this dinner, their run in with whatever the hell is actually in their apartment leaves his palms clammier and his face paler than it already was. Cas, ever the performer, looks the picture of ease as they stand on the doorstep of a ridiculously large house in the midst of a ridiculously large estate- it’s only in the very subtleties can Dean sense his nerves; he stands too straight, his hand balled into a fist too tight as he raises it to the door to knock, and the only thought that runs through Dean’s head then is, _you have to knock to enter your own house_?

Cas glances at him the glow from the porch light playing surprisingly softly across his features.

“You good?” he asks.

Dean pulls at his collar.

“No.”

 Cas looks like he’s about to say more when the door opens, and when his countenance abruptly changes to an uncomfortably stiff formalness, Dean knows he’s looking at Mr. Milton.

“Castiel,” he greets, his voice warm enough, but Dean instantly gets a vibe he doesn’t like. Mr. Milton- Dean doesn’t even know his first name- is an imposing man, a couple inches taller than Dean and at least twice as wide. A bushy brown beard covers half his face, a pair of icy blue eyes dominating the other. Suffice to say and despite the false warmth, Dean can see where Cas gets his general demeanour from. Those eyes find Dean, and as soon as their gazes meet, Dean immediately thinks, _I killed your son_.

“And you must be Dean,” he says, ushering them inside.

“Yes sir,” Dean says, shaking the hand that Mr. Milton has extended to him. He ignores Dean’s slippery palm, leading them further into the foyer. Dean doesn’t know exactly where the Milton money comes from- the only thing Cas has ever told him is that he refuses to accept their money. Conveniently, he left out the reason why.

The house is more a ranch than anything, but instead of the homey, kitschy style Dean associates with country living, it’s done in cool whites and faded beige with hardly an inner wall to speak of. Their voices echo in this place, and for some reason, that spooks him almost more than their own shitty, haunted apartment.

“How have you been, Castiel?” Mr. Milton asks as they make their way to the back of the house- Dean assumes the dining room is in prime location to get the best view of the backyard, the almost unbearably green forest and, beyond that, a deep blue lake that reflects the early moonlight.

“Well, thank you,” Cas says, and Dean is immensely uncomfortable. They’re more strangers than family.

“Good, good,” Mr. Milton says distractedly, like his mind has already drifted away from the conversation.

They come into the high ceilinged dining room, and Dean was right- the view is spectacular. It’s been a long, long time since Dean’s been anywhere but the same few city blocks over and over, and in theory, he should be thrilled to see the fruit of all this region’s rain at work, but instead, he feels claustrophobic, if that’s even possible. The house is huge and roomy, the sky is overcast and immense, and yet when Mr. Milton looks at him with that arctic stare, it’s like he’s surrounded on all sides, pressing in.

There are no family photos in Mr. Milton’s house.

“Would either of you like a drink?” he offers, gesturing to multiple shelves of liquor behind a bar nestled in the corner of the room.

Cas and Dean share a glance.

“No, thank you,” Cas says rigidly.

“Well in that case,” Mr. Milton gestures to the table, either unobservant or unobtrusive to the tension that his last offer caused, “Shall we sit?”

***

Once upon a time, Dean was good at small talk. He could chat up any potential one night stand in a heartbeat, charming himself into their conversation, and then soon enough, their bedroom.

Now, however, he finds himself floundering. His once renowned ability, reduced to nervous half-smiles and awkward head nods. The last thing he wants to do is to catch himself in a lie, and with Cas’ family, the opportunity is right on the tip of his tongue every time he opens his mouth. So he does his best to follow Cas’ advice, and only speak when spoken to.

“I invited your brothers and sister,” Mr. Milton tells Cas as they eat thick, hearty pumpkin and squash soup. Apparently cooking is a hobby of his, and if this were a normal meet-the-parents dinner, Dean would joke that that ability wasn’t, unfortunately, something that Cas inherited. As it is, he doesn’t say anything.

“They couldn’t make it, I assume?” Cas asks dryly. He doesn’t take a single spoonful of soup, and Dean knows he’s not the only one who notices.

“You know your sister,” Mr. Milton says dismissively, “Every tie with me she hasn’t cut is just because she hasn’t found big enough scissors. Your brothers, on the other hand, all have their reasons. Business trips, vacations, other commitments.” He hardly seems to care that the majority of his family obviously didn’t attempt to put away any time to spend with him. He looks down at Cas, his gaze curiously avid. “But not you, Castiel,” he says appraisingly, and Dean watches Cas subtly brace himself in his chair, “What do you two do in your free time?”

_Not sleep. Watch infomercials. Spend every waking and non-waking moment plagued by guilt. Get fucked by your son._

“We read,” Cas says, and after a pause, adds, “A lot.”

Mr. Milton nods, speculative.

“What do you do, Dean?” he asks, and Dean freezes, a spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth. He places it back in the bowl and clears his throat.

“I work, uh, at a local record store.”

It’s amazing how pathetic it sounds when said in a house like this.

But Mr. Milton’s expression doesn’t change, just swivels to Cas.

“And you?” he asks, “Still at the bar?”

Cas nods.

“I didn’t realize you knew,” he says neutrally.

Mr. Milton’s face blanks out for a second before he says, “Of course I knew,” and clears their bowls. He leaves for a moment to bring out the next course, and Dean takes the respite to put his head in his hands.

“I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this, Cas,” he whispers.

Cas, obviously not listening, is looking after his father, face suspicious.

“He wants something,” Cas says quietly, as if frustrated with himself. “The way he’s looking at me…” he shakes his head, “he hasn’t shown this much interest in me in years.”

“That counts as interest?” Dean says incredulously, their conversation then cut short when Cas’ father re-enters the room carrying a steaming roast on a serving platter.

 “Here we are,” he says, taking his seat again at the head of the table. He raises his wine glass. “A toast is in order, I think.” Dean shoots Cas a glance, but raises his water glass regardless.

“To family,” Mr. Milton says, a knowing glint in his eye, and clinks his glass to Cas’, then Dean’s.

Dean’s mind comes to a complete stop as he repeats, “To family”, and just manages not to throw up all over the dinner.

Mr. Milton knows. He _has_ to.

“Can I use your bathroom?” Dean blurts out, putting his glass down harder than he has to. Some water splashes over the side and onto his hand, and he practically jumps out of his chair.

“Down the hall and third door on the right,” Mr. Milton directs, inclining his head, and Dean practically sprints from the room.

He closes and locks the door behind him, gripping the sides of the sink and staring at himself in the mirror- he’s an absolute mess, and if Mr. Milton didn’t know before that he was sitting with his son’s murderers, he sure as hell knows now.

He leans down to splash some cold water on his face, and when he comes back up, water dripping from his eyelashes, he swears he sees movement behind him in the mirror. He whirls around, only to see the shower curtain ruffling in the breeze coming through the window screen.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes out, doing his best to calm himself down.

He takes another few minutes, desperately wishing for a drink, and makes his way back to the dining room, only to stop short of rounding the corner when he hears what sounds like an argument coming from the table.

“Did you even _invite_ the others?” Cas asks, “Or was this whole thing a ploy?”

Mr. Milton’s is the voice of a master manipulator- Dean knows so well because he’s heard it from Cas’ mouth so many times. It’s a false tenderness, attempting to lure Cas in.

“You know you were my first choice for this,” Mr. Milton says smoothly, “And now you have the chance-”

“The chance that I never wanted, and promised you I’d never take?” Cas snaps.

“ _To make something of yourself_ , Cas,” Milton corrects. “You think whittling your life away in some no-name bar in that cursed city is anything to be proud of? To aspire to?”

“You think _this_ is?” Cas asks, “You think me stepping into _his_ shoes is something to ‘aspire to’?”

“I think it’s more than you have right now,” Milton says, gentle again. 

There’s a long pause, as if Cas is trying but failing to come up with a counterpoint to that. After all, he lives in a tiny apartment with his fellow murderer and sometimes fuck buddy who can hardly function on a good day and who’ll probably turn everything even more to shit given half the chance, since that seems to be his M.O.

Then, to Dean’s complete and utter surprise, Cas says, “No, it’s not,” and there’s the sound of a chair scraping against the floor that makes Dean wince.

“I don’t think we’ll be staying for desert,” Cas says coolly.

When Dean hears him start walking away, he hurries back a few steps and pretends like he was just coming down the hall. When Cas sees him, he presses a gentle hand to Dean’s lower back and steers him towards the front door.

“Let’s go,” he murmurs.

***

By degrees, Cas’ face goes green as they’re driving home. Dean had offered to drive, but Cas had just shaken his head, tight lipped. Eventually, he pulls off to the side of an abandoned road with no streetlights, and turns off the engine. For a long time, they sit there in the dark, saying nothing.

Moonlight just brushes the ridges of Cas’ face, painting his forehead, the line of his nose, and his cheekbones in pale, misty light. It just reflects off the glint in Cas’ eye, enough so that Dean can see when he starts blinking rapidly, as if fighting off some feverous emotion rearing its ugly head.

“He wanted me to take over _his_ place in the family business,” Cas mutters bitterly. He doesn’t have to explain who _he_ is. “Given the nature of what they – _we_ \- do, I can’t even imagine my father would care if he knew the truth.” He reaches up to press his palm to his forehead, rubbing. He continues, hollow, “I come from a family that’s supposed to do whatever it takes to get to the top, and I can’t stomach one fucking murder?” he laughs shortly, hysterically, and Dean feels his own eyes widen.

“Cas, you can’t mean that,” he says faintly.

Cas rounds on him.

“And why can’t I?” he challenges, sounding half out of his head, “You saw his eyes, Dean. Being a cold hearted bastard runs in the family.”

“I… he was your _brother_ , Cas.”

“My brother was a terrible person!” Cas shouts, chest heaving. “If you knew the kinds of things he did just for fun- not even to speak of what he did officially- oh, god,” he moans, this time dropping his head to the steering wheel with a thump, “We probably did the world a favor and I can’t even fucking revel in it, Dean, because it doesn’t matter—he’s dead and the only thing I miss about him being alive is how I felt walking around without this fucking _weight_ on me all the time.”

 “I’m a terrible person, I know that,” Cas says somberly, coming down, “I just wish I couldfeel like a terrible person as well, so it wouldn’t hurt so fucking much.”

 All Dean can think of is how Cas looked in that alley that night, small and drowned and hopelessly lost. How broken he was, staring down at the corpse of his brother. It would be so easy to condemn him for that.

Cas has never talked about why he hated his brother so much, but Dean thinks it might a similar reason to why that hot resentment still curdles in his gut sometimes when he looks at Cas—sometimes, circumstances dictate what kind of person you become, and sometimes people do. With regards to Dean with Cas, it’s circumstances. Maybe between Cas and his brother, it was anything but. Maybe Cas saw what his brother was and what he became around him, and maybe he could only live with it for so long.

This is all just speculation, but something rises in Dean’s chest the longer he looks at Cas, and before he knows it, he’s kissing him for real. This isn’t a desperate-for-a-fuck kiss, or even a kiss of solidarity. It’s just a press of lips against lips for the sake of it, because Dean’s cold and somehow, over the past weeks, Cas has become warm. Pliable. He’s a person instead of an infinite ice sculpture. Dean feels bad for Cas, and it’s because of that that he kisses him, which is a bizarre thought.

Cas makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat, hesitates for a moment, and then responds eagerly, hands coming up to frame Dean’s face, the pads of his thumbs brushing over the apples of his cheeks.

When they pull apart, they’re both breathing heavily. Dean’s head is swimming.

Without another word, Cas turns the keys in the ignition, and they make it home without any further incident.

***

“For the record,” Dean says quietly, late that night after he’s fairly sure Cas has fallen asleep beside him, “You’re not a terrible person.”

***

Dean wakes up groggy and disoriented, but when he checks the time on his phone, he sees that he hasn’t even been sleeping an hour. Beside him, Cas slumbers quietly.

Dean stumbles out of bed and shambles into the living room, falling into the couch and cursing quietly when he can’t find the remote where it’s supposed to be on the table. He searches around in the dark, patting around himself and dipping his hands into the crevices of the couch.

He’s just about to give up and turn on the light when he hears the footsteps. He freezes on the spot, feeling his pulse quicken. The footsteps aren’t heavy, but those of someone trying to stay undetected.

Ever so slowly, Dean turns so that he can see the entrance to the hallway that leads to their bedroom, even though he knows it’s not Cas. He knows Cas’ tread, and this isn’t it.

Dean swallows, and the sound seems incredibly loud. He eases himself off the couch, wincing when its springs creak and settle with the shifted weight. In response, the footsteps move from what sounds like the kitchen to stand beside the front closet. Dean lets out a silent breath, his heart fluttering madly against his ribcage. He’s only about ten feet from the light switch on the wall, but he’s afraid even the slightest movement will alert the footsteps to his presence- assuming, of course, whoever owns said steps doesn’t already know exactly where he is.

The television flickers to life behind him.

Dean whirls around, only to see black and white static fizzing quietly back at him. Behind the noise, it looks like an old infomercial is trying to sell him a rotisserie oven.

He turns again, this time trying to use the glow from the screen to suss out the location of the footsteps. The apartment is still and silent, lit only by the ghostly, white light from the television. The shadows of the furniture lengthen menacingly, and the dark corners of the room the light can’t reach seem somehow darker. Tension has his chest in a vice, his breathing shallow and too fucking loud; he feels exposed, lit from behind like this. Naked.

Dean’s throat has gone sandpaper dry, and when he hears the footsteps again- this time like the perpetrator has just crouched behind the couch, much closer to him- he makes a horrible, hoarse rasping sound that scratches his throat on its way out.

He has to move. If he can just get to the light switch, he has to believe he’ll be okay.

Cas is only sleeping about thirty feet away in the bedroom, and yet Dean feels like he’s the only person in this entire city.

He takes a deep breath.

He takes a step.

As soon as his gentle foot hits the carpeted floor, there’s another footstep. His breath catches in his throat, because it wasn’t his.

Dean takes a second silent step, and again another, and the louder step matches his perfectly. He almost closes his eyes, but he knows if he does that he won’t be able to bring himself to open them again.

He steels himself, and makes a dash for the light switch. Beneath his own treads, he can hear the second set of feet moving in exact time with his, and the fear catches in his limbs again, has him fumbling for the light switch, mind screaming.

There’s something beside him. He can see it out of the corner of his eye, but most importantly, he can _feel_ it. It raises bile in his throat, and just when he thinks he’s going to be crushed under its weight, he manages to flick the switch-

-And in that split second after the lights are turned off but before they’re turned back on, there’s a face only inches from Dean’s own, sopping wet and white as snow.

It smiles at him.

***

“It was your brother,” Dean says hollowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. Cas sits on the other side, cross legged, staring at him solemnly. The clock on his nightstand blazes in the dimly lit room, only a couple minutes since Dean crashed back into the bedroom, eyes wide with panic and heart racing. “I saw your dead brother.”

“Well- we knew,” Cas says, “I mean, we didn’t _know_ , but we knew well enough.”

Dean huffs something resembling laughter.

“Careful, that sounds like something I would say.”

Cas frowns at that, but doesn’t comment on it. He shifts slightly on the bed, and Dean feels himself wobble. He puts his head in his hands.

“We have to do something,” he says. “I don’t know how much longer I can live with this.” After a moment, he adds, with a useless gesture, “With any of this.”

Cas is silent for a minute.

“Maybe it’s our penance,” he suggests quietly. “Maybe we’re being punished.”

Dean lets out all his breath in one, long sigh.

“I said that, didn’t I?” Dean asks, suddenly remembering, “When I was going through the withdrawal.”

The lines around Cas’ mouth tighten, and Dean has to agree. He may have been the one going through it, but Cas, for the most part, was right there with him. It can’t be a pleasant memory for him, either.

“Yeah,” Cas confirms, “You did.”

“So we’re in agreement, then,” Dean says despondently. “Wonderful.”

Cas uncrosses his legs and lays on his back, staring at the ceiling. Shadows from the lamp on Dean’s nightstand play across his face, expression neutral.

“We deserve it,” he says flatly, finally. As if it’s the end of an argument- maybe one he’s been having with himself.

Regardless, it’s not like Dean is going to disagree.

Cas rolls over and looks like he’s trying to go back to sleep, while Dean takes up his place staring at the ceiling and worrying. Soon enough, the only sound in the room is the slow and peaceful breathing of sleeping from Cas’ side of the bed.

Dean glances towards the hallway outside their bedroom, and almost, _almost_ says _fuck it_ and heads back out to the living room. But then he thinks about the face- the face that’s supposed to be rotting and eaten away by the fish and the currents by now, and his stomach flips quickly enough that he’s afraid he’s going to vomit if he stands up.

He told Cas that they had to do something about what’s been going on, but as the image of the waterlogged expression remains seared on the insides of his eyelids, he starts to wonder how much of a _right_ they have to do _anything_. If this is some sort of karmic penance, the universe getting back at them, then why should they do anything? Guilty people need to be punished, and they’re nothing if not guilty.

Dean turns on his side and stares at the back of Cas’ t-shirt. He idly watches the soft rise and fall of Cas’ shoulders, subconsciously matching his own breaths in time with Cas’. His heart crumples painfully at the idea of such a quiet moment, immediately rejecting any and all kinds of peace.

Dean knows that not only are their living circumstances getting worse, but that there’s something changing between him and Cas; Something sanding away the hardest edges of them and leaving them, if not smooth, at least navigational. He wants to be- at the very least- content with the change. But Cas and misery are so very closely intertwined in Dean’s mind that he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to separate the two.

Of course, Dean doubts he’ll ever be able to completely separate himself from his own misery, regardless; that would be like trying to walk away from his own shadow. He concludes that the misery is at least better shared by two than lamented by one.

That, and Cas is finally thawing out. Dean can’t help but hoard the warmth, despite the despondency he knows he truly deserves.

***

Two nights later, the phone rings.

It’s almost three in the morning, Dean doing his best facsimile of sleep, Cas blearily rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand as he attempts to wake himself up.

“Who the hell is calling at this time?” Dean asks quietly, for some reason still attempting to preserve the tranquil sanctity of the early morning despite the phone’s shrieking. He glances at Cas, only to find Cas glancing half-nervously back at him.

“I was having really strange dreams just before it started ringing,” he says, disquiet although almost in passing. He stands up and stretches, the phone’s ring echoing distortedly down the corridor from the kitchen. They keep meaning to get a second landline for the bedroom, but somehow never get around to it.

“Dreams about what?” Dean asks, but Cas isn’t listening, already exiting the room and whisping down the hallway. The phone stops mid-ring as Cas picks it up, and Dean enters the dark kitchen just as he says a simple, “Hello?” into the receiver.

Dean can’t hear what’s being said by whoever’s on the other line, but he does watch as what he can see of Cas’ face grows horrifically pale, dread etched into every crevice.

“Cas,” he hisses, but Cas completely ignores him, turning his back to Dean and gripping the edge of the counter with one hand as he continues to jam the phone against his ear with the other. Dean moves so that he’s in front of Cas again, placing a firm palm on the arm still gripping the counter, both a gesture of support and prompting. Cas still won’t meet his eyes, expression absolutely still, so Dean yanks the phone away and presses it to his own ear.

“Who the fuck is this?” he snaps into the receiver, but all he’s met with is momentary static, and then a loud, intruding dial tone. Slowly, he lowers the phone and it dangles listlessly at his side, the dial tone loud enough to fill the silence in the kitchen. He glances at the clock over the stove. It’s red and blinking 12:00 at him, like they just had a momentary power outage. Dean scrolls through the caller ID, trying to find a name to go with the number, but he can’t find either. The last incoming call is recorded as a telemarketer who phoned just after three yesterday afternoon. Licking his lips nervously, stomach unquiet, Dean drops the phone back onto its base and turns to regard a shaken Cas, leaning against the counter with his head in his hands.

“Hey,” he says quietly, standing in front of Cas and fitting a palm to each elbow. “Hey.”

Bit by bit, Cas raises his head to finally meet Dean’s gaze head on, and it’s only then, highlighted by the small amount of moonlight that makes it through to the kitchen, that Dean realizes he’s not the only one with sleepless eyes. Dean had gotten used to the gauntness- after all, he sees it in his own reflection every day- but he was always under the impression that Cas sleeps at least fairly well.

Obviously not.

“I couldn’t hear well,” Cas says, so low that Dean has to lean close enough that he can feel Cas’ hot breath against his cheek. “It was crackly and popping- kind of like the records you play all the time.” Dean has an immediate flashback to the morning in the record store, to the blond teenager who scared him half out of his wits. He tries to tamp down on his shudder, refocuses on Cas. “Of course it was him,” he says. “He said a lot of things, even though I could only hear him half the time. He called me ‘brother’ a lot.” Cas’ voice drops again, haunted, “He said- he yelled- _shrieked_ , actually- that… that…” At this, Cas loses steam and breathes out heavily, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he says forlornly. “It doesn’t matter what he said.”

Dean’s grip on Cas tightens, his palms finding themselves sliding up to encircle Cas’ biceps.

“It matters,” he insists, “If it’s the thing you can’t say, it’s probably the most important thing _it_ said.”

Cas swallows hard, refusing to meet Dean’s stare again. The emotion drains from his face like its all been run through a sieve, and he stares expressionlessly at Dean as he quotes, “‘How dare you find something good to take out of this,’”.

 Dean lets go of Cas completely, as Cas now meets Dean’s stare head on. Dean has the most uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu, just like when Sam told him, weeks ago on the phone, that Cas loved him.

Dean clears his throat.

“What does that even mean?” he asks, playing dumb even though from the looks of it his physical reaction was more than enough to clue Cas in. He finds himself intensely uncomfortable as Cas continues to stare stoically at him, as if daring him to answer his own question.

When neither of them speak, Cas brushes by him brusquely.

“Nothing,” he says, “It means nothing.”

***

The next night, Cas disappears. Dean knows his shift at the bar ended at least six hours ago, and he hasn’t been back to the apartment yet, or even called. Dean phones his cell at least five times, each time getting told to leave a message and hanging up before he says something he’ll regret.

He goes onto the balcony and sits in the shitty, broken plastic chair he grabbed from a dumpster a couple months ago on the way home from work. His breath mists white against the dark night sky, and he shoves his hands into the pouch of his sweater. For a minute, he sits in silence and tries to think about absolutely nothing.

Naturally, in the next minute, he’s smoking furiously. He thought he would have gotten used to the feeling of the poison clouding his lungs by now; he desperately hopes they’re grey.

He smoked his first cigarette when he was eleven—after his mom died. He coughed up a lung and then smoked another one. His dad never noticed because he was too busy drinking himself to death, and Sam watched cartoons in the motel room they stayed in after they got evicted from the house.

By the time his dad died, when Dean was twenty, he had long since graduated the juvenile class, but that didn’t stop him from smoking one in his father’s name- whether it was in his honor or not, Dean still doesn’t know. His father was a bastard, after all.

The spot on his fingers where he holds his cigarettes turn black, coated in ash he hasn’t bothered to brush off yet. When he hears the front door open, he stands up immediately and the debris from the cigarettes dusts off him in a black cloud, disappearing into the late, late night. He thumps the rest away like he’s shaking out a dirty rug, hoping the awful smell retreats with it.

Once inside, he feels his cheeks flush at the change in temperature- it’s cold enough out there that even room temp has him uncomfortably clammy.

“Hey,” he greets, trying not to let the worry curdle his tone, “It’s been hours.”

Cas nods non-committedly, back to Dean as he places the kettle on the stove.

“I know I don’t usually pry,” Dean hedges, “But where’ve you been? It’s cold as fuck out there.”

Cas is silent, staring avidly at the kettle. He touches his index finger to it and leaves it there. There’s something so incredibly, unexpectedly sad about the gesture that Dean has to blink and look away.

“Go to bed, Dean,” Cas says softly, dropping his hand back to his side.

He doesn’t look at Dean for the rest of the night. 

***

A week goes by, and Dean feels like they’ve taken two steps backward. Cas barely looks at him, let alone speaks to him. He disappears for long hours at a time, and Dean would assume that he’s picked up more shifts at the bar if he didn’t come home looking even more terrible than he usually does.

Whenever he tries to broach the topic, Cas immediately shuts down. Nothing Dean says can sway him, and if he pushes too hard (which he rarely does) Cas just stops whatever he’s doing and leaves the apartment. It gets to the point where Dean eventually lapses into lengthy and moody silences of his own, and even the apartment itself seems to have quieted down. Dean watches his late night infomercials in relative peace now, even though he’s sure he saw a guy in the audience of one of the ones about miracle hair growth who he swears looked exactly like the teenager who came into the record shop so many weeks ago and screamed vinyl at him.

It’s hard to imagine, but he becomes even more miserable. His and Cas’ misery together didn’t cancel each other out, but there had always been solace in the knowledge that it was the _same_ misery that haunted the two of them.

Things between him and Cas had been changing, perhaps growing into something that, while not deserved, was welcomed. But then, as quickly the rain in this city can catch you unawares while crossing the street, Cas changed into someone else and Dean was the one who got drenched.

It was something to do with the phone call. Whatever that thing said on the phone got to Cas, somehow. Dean knows it has to be more than just what Cas quoted to him. There has to be.

The strangest thing is that since that call, the phone rings all the time. Cas never lets Dean answer it. Dean could be standing three feet away from it, Cas all the way in the bedroom, and he’d still find a way to beat Dean to it. Dean has no proof that it’s the same person calling- the numbers are blocked. But then again, they’ve never exactly been a hotspot for blocked calls, and Cas’ face always changes in the same way when the ringer starts blaring; his expression tightens, like there’s plastic wrap held around his head, suffocating him.

Weeks go by, and they slowly recede into themselves. Sometimes, Dean catches glimpses of the Cas he thought he was getting to know- the first, bleary moments of waking up in the morning before Cas forgets that his new act is reverting to an even colder heart; or, the times when Dean catches Cas looking at him, actual affection in his eyes, and Cas immediately looks away, as if chastising himself.

Once, Dean gets to the phone before Cas, only because Cas is in the shower at the time. Within seconds, though, Cas is sprinting through the apartment, towel clutched at his waist, water droplets flying everywhere. When he rounds the corner and sees Dean standing right over the phone, he freezes. Water drips from the strands of hair in his eyes as he stares pleadingly at Dean.

“Don’t,” he begs.

When the phone rings again, Dean picks up the receiver.

Cas stares at him in horror as Dean listens, waiting for the person on the other end to say something, but he doesn’t even hear anyone breathing.

“Who is this?” he finally asks.

Click. They hang up, and Dean’s left with the dial tone blaring in his ear.

He slowly puts the phone down, and when he looks back up, Cas is still staring at him.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Cas whispers, and turns around. Dean listens to him pad down the hallway and the quiet click of the bathroom door shutting.   

Everything he does these days is so quiet, and Dean wonders for the millionth time if Cas is the one haunting this apartment after all.

***

“Dean?”

The surprise in Sam’s voice would be insulting if it weren’t so justified. Dean nervously rubs the hem of his shirt between his fingers.

“Hi, Sam.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Dean can imagine Sam pinching himself to make sure he’s not dreaming- or, maybe, having a nightmare.

“Sorry-” Sam says bluntly after another minute of not saying anything, “Sorry I just… I wasn’t expecting you to call.” His voice wavers a bit as he adds, “I don’t even look for your number anymore.”

Dean tries to ignore the sting in that, but it’s impossible.

“Yeah, well,” he says, going for lighthearted and missing it by a mile, “We were supposed to take a break but then we never actually closed on the deal, so I don’t really know if I’m violating the terms and conditions by calling…”

There’s a snort from the other end of the line as Sam says, his voice attempting the same, upbeat tone as Dean’s, “Well, If you keep using that impressive, lawyerly vocabulary, how could I say no?”

When Dean laughs into the phone, Sam’s tone returns to normal, if sentimental, as he continues, “No, man, I’m glad you called. How are you?”

“I’m…” Dean clears his throat. “I’m okay. What about you?”

“Good,” Sam enthuses, and then there’s a short, surprised pause, almost like he was caught off guard by his own answer. Dean imagines the lawyerly stuff is actually going quite well, but he’s afraid if he asks about it, it’ll lead to talking about other things in their lives, which, inevitably, leads back to the body he dumped into the ocean.

So instead, he just parrots Sam and says, “Good, good.”

“And Cas?” Sam asks, his tone careful, like it always becomes when potentially sensitive subjects comes up.

“Good,” Dean says again, and then his own pause, not because he’s surprised himself, but because he’s trying to figure out how to word what he wants to say next.

“That sounded… hesitant,” Sam says, stepping around the eggshells as well as he can.

Dean takes a deep breath.

“This probably isn’t something you want to discuss, but I don’t really have anyone else to talk to,” Dean says, only obliquely referencing his severe lack of social connections, “But Cas is kind of the reason I called.”

“Really,” Sam says.

Dean nods even though Sam can’t see him.

“I just… I don’t think talking to my pillow is going to help this time, y’know?”

Sam huffs appreciatively into the phone.

“I’ll help as much as I can, Dean, but it’s not like I’ve had much time for relationships of my own with sixty hour work weeks.”

“I don’t need advice- I need a sounding board.”

“Well then in that case…”

“Yeah, yeah, you’d be happy to help,” Dean cheekily finishes for him. “Down, boy.”

Sam swallows noisily.

“You’re so fucking annoying,” he says, sounding like there’s a bit of a lump in his throat, “God, I forgot how annoying you are.”

Dean smiles sadly.

“Just doing my big brotherly duty.” Despite the fact he hasn’t done that particularly duty in a long, long time, Dean likes to pretend.

Silence falls between them as Dean once again searches for the right words. Obviously, he can’t tell Sam the whole story- he’ll need to embellish here and there and skip over a whole lot of stuff at the beginning. He’ll have to lie and evade and pretend his memory is failing him for some, specific reason that won’t upset his brother too much. He’ll need half-truths and non-committal grunts and mumble through some things. 

He’ll have to lie. He always has to lie.

He’s so fucking sick of lying it makes his teeth ache.

So he thinks, _fuck it_ , and tells Sam the simplest truth he can without ruining his baby brother’s life.

“I don’t think it’s working with Cas,” he blurts. “I mean, for a while there it was like it was _trying_ to work, and then all of a sudden it went to shit.”

An almost relieved exhale from Sam’s end, as if he was expecting worse, “… Did you, I dunno, argue?” Sam asks, “Like, was it one of those fights that seems really innocent at first but then escalates and before you know it you’re insulting each other’s mother?”

“Not exactly,” Dean says, scratching idly at his forearm, “Actually, it was kind of the opposite. It’s been really quiet. Like… unnervingly quiet, almost.”

Sam makes anunhapp _y_ sound.

“Y’know,” he says, “When I was studying divorce cases, I read what some of the kids had to say, and a lot of them talked about how it wasn’t the shouting that got to them, but the silence.”

Dean shifts uncomfortably in his spot on the couch. It’s amazing how even the suggestion of something as ludicrous to him as a divorce- since, no, him and Cas aren’t married and they never will be- makes his stomach flip. He feels a tickle on the back of his neck and glances behind him, suddenly paranoid that Cas has come home early from work and has heard the entire conversation, but there’s no one there.

“That sucks,” Dean finally offers, turning around and staring at the blank television screen again. His reflection is faint in the grey, convex glass, barely distinguishable.

“Yeah,” Sam says, slowly. “But I mean, that’s worst case scenario here. Realistically, these things happen to everyone.”

“It’s not like Cas is a forthcoming guy,” Dean responds, “I mean, hell, trying to talk to him on a normal day is like pulling teeth at best.”

Sam goes quiet for a minute, and Dean looks over his shoulder again to stare momentarily at their empty kitchen and entranceway. He scratches the back of his neck.

“You said things were going well before the nosedive?” Sam asks, obviously puzzling something out.

“Relatively, yeah.”

Sam’s tone is somber as he speaks again.

“Didn’t Cas’ brother die just before you met?”

Dean freezes, his brain going into panic mode. He blinks rapidly, trying to process the question.

“Presumed dead,” he corrects hoarsely, “He went missing and they never found him.”

“Right, of course,” Sam says apologetically, obviously mistaking the stress in Dean’s voice for some sort of transferred grief.

He should have known they’d come back to the lie. That’s why him and Cas had to cut themselves off from the outside world. _Everything_ is about the lie. _Everything_ is about the worst decision they’ve each made in their respective lives, and because of it, they can’t be a part of _everything_ anymore.

“Well,” Sam continues, “it hasn’t even been a year yet. People can feel guilty for feeling happy after a loved one has died.”

“ _Happy_?” Dean repeats incredulously.

“Don’t you remember how long it took for you to laugh again after mom died?” Sam asks quietly. “I was only a kid and even I remember how horrible that was.” Old grief, eventually lost to time, echoes in Sam’s voice as he remembers, “Months, Dean. It took you months.”

It’s not like Dean expected this conversation to make him feel better, but he didn’t expect for it to make him so acutely horrible.

“I don’t know if that’s it,” he says roughly, already regretting the decision to call Sam. He continues to stare morosely at his reflection in the television screen, the outline murky and fuzzy. It’s one of those old TVs from the nineties that takes a generation to turn on, and heavy enough that Dean’s not even sure if he could move it by himself. “You know that I’ve been going through a…” he clears his throat, “Rough patch.” Which would be the understatement of the century, if what he didn’t say next edged out just ahead in the competition, “And, Cas has been trying to help. D’you think that, I dunno, they’re transferrable?”

A confused pause, and then, only half serious, “What, you mean that Cas, like, _caught_ your issues? Like a cold or something?”

More like they fed- _feed_ \- off each other’s issues.

“Something like that.”

When Sam realizes his brother isn’t joking, he unintentionally scoffs into the phone.

“Sorry,” he says, “You just, uh, caught me off guard.”

“Seems to be happening a lot today.”

“No kidding,” Sam says, “The universe must really be out of whack.”

Just as Dean says, “Tell me about it,” he feels another tickle on the back of his neck, this time enough that the hairs there stand up on end, practically vibrating.

“Shit,” Dean snaps, standing up and turning around fully, raking his palm over the back of his neck and ears.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks from the other end.

“Uh,” Dean starts prowling around the apartment, keeping a wary eye on the closet door even though he knows it won’t help. “I think a spider just crawled onto my neck.” He peers behind the kitchen counters that overlook the living room, makes sure to glance under each chair and the couch.

“Seriously? God, Dean, that place is a shithole.”

“Tell me about it,” Dean repeats distractedly, even going so far as to open the screen door and take a look on the balcony. It’s misting heavily out, and his fingers are tingling. When he finds nothing, he collapses back onto the couch again, rubbing his forehead.

“You know you can always come stay with me,” Sam reminds him for the millionth time. Dean thinks it’s more of a kneejerk reaction to the reminder that his big brother is an absolute loser than a genuine invitation at this point, although he knows Sam would loudly protest said assumption. “My apartment is small, but the couch is a pullout. We could fit.” He hesitates only a moment before adding, “Obviously Cas is welcome, as well.”

“Uh huh,” Dean says, ignoring how much he’d like to see Sam, and also some fucking sunlight for once. “We’ve talked about this.”

“I’m just letting you know,” Sam says, “In case you’ve forgotten the hundreds of other times I’ve offered.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean figuratively waves him off. “I think my skin is white enough to blind everyone on the west coast in one go, anyway. I whip off my shirt to go swimming, and we’re all going down. I couldn’t do that to an entire coast.”

Sam snorts.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” he says, and Dean knows he’s not just talking about judicious sunscreen application.

“I know,” he says.

“Dean,” Sam says seriously, “There’s a lot you’re not telling me.” When Dean tries to protest, Sam quickly cuts him off, “- And, fine, okay? We’re all entitled to our privacy. But can you just tell me one thing?” he asks, the tiniest hint of little brother needling that he’ll never truly lose filtering through.

“Yeah, Sam,” Dean says, feeling utterly defeated for some reason, “Go for it.”

“This thing with Cas,” Sam says haltingly, like his suspicions have been in the works for a long time, building a case like any good lawyer, “Your relationship…” he pauses. “And don’t lie to me, Dean. Please.” He takes a deep breath. “Is it real?”

Dean is silent.

Is it?

What does it mean that he and Cas share an apartment, a bed? That they fuck on a semi-regular basis and share meals on a similar schedule? What about the fact that, had they not murdered a man together, they’d never have met in the first place? What does it mean that Dean ran to Cas’ aid before he even knew him, when he was stone drunk and could just as easily have walked on by, chalking it up to another alcohol fueled bar fight? That they’ve been keeping each other’s heads above water (just barely) for all these months? That Cas was impenetrable for the longest time, impossible to talk to and emoting on a dime for convenience’s sake, shutting Dean out for months on end and retreating so far into himself that he didn’t know how to find his way out again? That Dean, for the longest time, convinced himself that blaming Cas for everything was the only option, afraid that shouldering his part of the blame would finally cause him to bend the knee he’s managed to keep upright since he was just a child and his entire world shattered around him?

What about the time Cas brought him coffee at the shop, and insinuated there could be coffees sipped together in the future? Or the moments, few and far between, when they managed to coax a laugh out of the other, each the most miserable person they knew? When Cas was drunk and whispered to Dean that he didn’t think _this_ would hold, his palm soft and kind against his cheek, what does it mean that Dean’s heart cracked, just a little bit?

They’ve muddled through the fire this far- what does it mean that they’ve muddled through it together?

“Yes,” Dean says, this time actually surprising himself. “Yeah, Sam. It is.”

***

Dean’s making tea at three in the morning, the only light in the kitchen coming from the stove turning red under the kettle. He’s standing over the oven, his face barely illuminated by the glow, when Cas gets home from wherever he was for the past twelve hours. He’s entirely swathed in shadow as he enters, the natural moonlight barely skirting across his features as he shucks off his jacket, his keys jingling slightly with the movement. Dean watches him from the darkness of the kitchen, and when Cas feels the eyes on him, he freezes.

“Dean,” he says quietly, and it’s only when Cas steps into the kitchen that Dean can see how messed up he is. He looks absolutely wrecked, face wan and distant, eyes hollow.

Dean pushes off the stove and regards Cas sadly, although he makes no move to offer an assistance.

“What happened?” he asks, expecting no definitive answer.

Unsurprisingly, Cas just shakes his head. He moves past Dean to take the boiling kettle off the stove, and opens the cupboard to retrieve two slightly cracked mugs, handing one to Dean in silence. He rifles through another cupboard, putting the box of Dean’s favorite tea on the counter next to his. Cas places one of Dean’s teabags in his mug, and when he starts to pour the water over it, Dean watches his hand tremble, the stream of water swaying.

Dean puts one hand on Cas’ waist, the other gently prying the kettle from him.

“Let me get it,” he murmurs, subtly maneuvering Cas out of harm’s way. Cas doesn’t protest, just fixedly watches Dean’s hands as they continue to make the tea. When Dean hands Cas a steaming mug, Cas immediately sets it back on the counter, and stops Dean from grabbing his own. When Dean turns to Cas to raise an eyebrow, he rests his palms at Dean’s waist and kisses him, lingering. Dean’s finally the one who takes a step back, searching Cas’ face for any hint as to what the hell is going through his head.

“I’m sorry,” Cas murmurs, kissing him again. “I’m sorry,” he promises as he takes Dean by the hand and leads him to their bedroom. Once there, Cas sits Dean down on the edge of the bed, dropping to his knees on the threadbare carpet.

“Whoa, hey,” Dean puts his hands on Cas’ shoulders, holding him back. “That’s not- you don’t have to-” But Cas doesn’t do what Dean expects him to do- instead, he pulls up Dean’s shirt, not even bothering to gesture for him to take it off, and presses his lips to Dean’s stomach. Almost immediately, Dean feels his cheeks grow hot. It’s hardly a sexual touch, but strangely intimate. Cas drags his lips across the broad expanse of Dean’s stomach, pausing every couple seconds to pay close attention to certain spots that tingle when the open air of the apartment hits them again. When Dean’s entire stomach is thrumming, Cas slides his hands down and around Dean’s calf, resting his forehead on Dean’s thigh. For a moment, he just breathes, and even through his denim, Dean can feel the words Cas speaks to him, muffled as they are.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, pressing a kiss there. Finally, he raises his head to meet Dean’s eyes, his expression illuminated by the moonlight coming in the window behind their bed. He stares up at Dean, pained, and Dean can’t help but reach down and cup his face. Perhaps unconsciously, Cas turns his cheek into the touch, and Dean’s chest constricts.

“C’mere,” he whispers, drawing Cas up so they’re face to face. Cas complies, coaxing Dean backwards on the bed so that he can follow, straddling his waist. He reverently runs his hands up and down Dean’s sides under his shirt, fingertips leaving trails of goosebumps. Dean fits his hands to just under Cas’ hip bones, thumbs caressing the twin juts. Cas leans down so their torsos line up, slotting his mouth to Dean’s. They’re not going fast, but Dean can taste the desperation on Cas’ tongue. It makes him ache, but he’s silent.

Dean should be talking- should be trying to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it; instead, he’s greedy. He lets Cas kiss him and kisses Cas in return, soaking up the sensation of being warm. It’s one that’s been hard to come by, lately. Behind them, rain lashes angrily at the window, unable to enter.

Cas lifts Dean’s shirt off fully this time, dropping it off to the side, and presses his lips to the newly exposed skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Dean’s ribcage, and Dean finds himself blinking furiously to fight off the sudden itchiness in his eyes.

“It’s okay, Cas,” Dean lies quietly, throat tight, “It’s all gonna be okay.” The noise of the rain almost drowns him out, but from the way Cas shudders, Dean thinks he heard. He wraps his hands around Cas’ back, pulling his shirt up and over. He rests his hands on the bare skin, pressing his mouth to Cas’ shoulder, reveling in the solidness there. He works his way from the juncture between Cas’ neck and shoulder back to his face, to his lips.

“I said I didn’t think I could do it,” Cas admits between kisses, “This.” Dean undoes the zipper on Cas’ pants and slides his hand in, gently stroking Cas. He lets out a moan riding a hard exhale, kissing Dean again with renewed fervor. “I think I lied,” he says. Dean rubs his thumb through the precome beading at the head, keeping it slow. They haven’t kept lube on hand in a while, for obvious reasons, and Dean doesn’t want this to hurt- not this time.

“Here-” he pants instead of responding to Cas, because he has no idea _how_ to respond. He offers him his palm. “Lick.”

Cas licks, his tongue rasping along the flat of Dean’s palm. Dean licks too, just barely tasting the tiniest hint of Cas.

“Okay?” he asks, and Cas nods. Usually, Cas is the one to take charge in bed, but Dean doesn’t mind taking the helm once in a while- especially since Cas seems to need it tonight.

Dean starts tugging down Cas’ jeans, and it’s an awkward angle but Cas gets the job done soon enough. He sits back on his heels as he then pulls Dean’s sweats off, carefully and slowly. When they’re both completely naked, Cas just sits there for a couple minutes, staring. Dean’s face heats again, but there’s nothing judgemental in Cas’ expression-in fact, it’s closer to a quiet contentment than anything else, which throws Dean through all kinds of loops.

“Can you just come up here?” Dean doesn’t mean to say it as gruffly as he does, but Cas seems to catch himself, once again climbing up and sitting himself on Dean’s lap. He revolves his hips experimentally, and they both hiss at the pleasure.  Cas does it again, and the sparks crackle through Dean’s body, his heart thundering and tripping over itself in its haste to keep up. He reaches down and strokes the two of them together as Cas continues to gyrate, adding friction where there’s already heat, and it’s wonderful, glorious, transcendental, and a million other words that Dean has to dust off in his vocabulary, since it’s been rare in the past months that he’s thought to describe _anything_ that way. Overcome, he clasps a sweaty hand to the back of Cas’ neck and pulls him down, kissing him with everything he’s got and then some. They rock together, smouldering, and only briefly break apart to draw in great, heaving breaths.

“I’m sorry,” Cas breathes as he comes, the damp and the cold still screaming to get in, knocking its fists against the side of the building and making obscene gestures. But it can’t get them. The only thing haunting them right now is Cas’ apology, and as Dean comes right after, he finds Cas’ hand and grasps it in his own kind of desperation, because in the end, he’s always needed something to hold onto, and somewhere along the way, that something became _Cas_.

In the morning, Cas’ side of the bed is empty and cold.

***

One day, a woman- who definitely looks like she’s taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way- shows up at the store, looking for a birthday present for her son.

“His name is Ben,” she gushes, proud in only that way unconditional love can be, “He’s turning ten and he’s got this major thing for classic rock, and, y’know,” she laughs self-consciously, “You’d think I’d know my stuff since I was around back then, but somehow, it’s all completely over my head.” She unconsciously flips her dark hair over her shoulder, like she doesn’t even notice it’s in the way.

Oh, wouldn’t Dean love to harmlessly flirt with her. Wouldn’t he love for her to leave here with the perfect record for her son and a great big smile on her face thanks to the charming store clerk.

“Well,” he musters up the best smile he can, and is surprised when the muscles around his mouth don’t split from disuse. “I’m sure you had more important things going on at the time than us music nerds.” It doesn’t come out right at all— he’s going through the motions, and she can obviously tell. He’s exhausted and he looks like shit. Not exactly prime real estate.

“Sorry, I uh,” he shakes his head, turning away to lead her to a length of shelf at the back of the store, “A little rusty,” he admits ruefully.

“Uh… Yeah,” she half laughs. “No worries. Help me find a good record and we’ll call it even, okay?”

Dean scratches the back of his neck, hiding his face. “Sounds like a plan.”

As he’s piling up potential records next to him, his mind wanders. Before he knows it, it’s not the woman who’s humoring him patiently flipping through records across from him, but Cas. He looks up, and when Cas catches him staring, he smiles wryly.

“My sister,” he says by way of explanation, holding up a Clash album. “Rebel of the family.”

Dean nods in understanding, noting the disheveled hair and slender fingers. He smiles in response.

“Nice,” he says appreciatively, “She a big Clash fan?”

“What?” Cas blinks in confusion, and then looks at the front of the record he just picked up. “Oh. I have no idea, actually. I just went to the section with the angriest covers.”

Dean snorts and then comes around the partition to stand beside him, surveying the shelf.

“You got to the right genre, at least,” Dean appraises, sliding a few out to hand to Cas. “Punk’s probably a good bet for her.”

“I don’t see her often,” Cas admits, “For all I know, her interests could have changed and she could be listening to ABBA right now.”

Dean outright laughs at that.

“Anyone who can stomach ABBA can handle any of these,” he assures Cas, gesturing to the records he’s picked out. Cas flips through them, looking befuddled, and Dean can’t help but be completely charmed. “Y’know,” he says, as Cas continues to look more and more distressed, “If you got just a little bit more info, I could help you narrow down your search…”

Cas meets his glance knowingly.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he agrees, “Although the last thing I want to do is to keep you from your other customers.” Dean doesn’t have to look behind him to know there’s literally no one else in the store, and bites the inside of his cheek. “How about we discuss it over coffee?” he suggests. “Then when I come back in, I’ll know exactly what I’m looking.”

Cas follows Dean back to the cash where he grabs a pen and a scrap of paper, jotting his number down. He hands it to Cas.

“I look forward to doing business with you…”

“Castiel.”

Dean smiles.

“Cool name. I’ll see you around, Castiel.”

When Cas smiles this time, it’s finally enough to crack. The illusion shatters around Dean, sprinkling to the ground like rain droplets at his feet. In Cas’ place, the woman looks at him imploringly.

“Find anything?” she asks. It takes Dean a moment to respond, nodding robotically, a strange tugging sensation in his chest. He processes her transaction, doing his best approximation of a parting smile on her way out, although he won’t be surprised if she doesn’t come back anytime soon.

Maybe that one meeting would have been enough. Maybe one befuddled Cas looking for a record plus one charming Dean with access to said record is a way of getting from point A to point B without all the fucking detours they’ve had to take. Maybe it would have been something mundane, normal. Maybe they wouldn’t have had to live with twin gaping holes in their chests.

It could have been that easy, and yet somehow, they took the long way around.

Dean leans his elbows on the desk, dropping his head into the crook.

There’s always going to be a dead body between them. There’s no way around that. No way around the guilt, and the toll it’s been taking on them. Every time he touches Cas, he leaves bloodstains on him.

Cas has pulled away so far by now, though, so far out of Dean’s reach that it hardly seems to matter anymore. The wind blows through them again, licking up their insides, only proving how hollow they’ve become. They were Russian dolls, hiding inside one another for so long that Dean’s forgotten what true loneliness feels like. He doesn’t know how to carry this alone.

 ***

It’s overjoyed. The longer Cas is away, the happier the presence in their home becomes. The box has taken up permanent residence on their coffee table now, leering at anyone who walks in the front door. Sometimes untouched mugs will shatter with zero provocation, or all the cupboard doors fly open at once.

“It’s won,” Dean says, melancholic, on the night of the first snowfall of the season. Fat white flakes drift by their balcony door, as if someone in the sky is shaking out a particularly dusty blanket.

Cas, sitting in the armchair on the other end of the couch with a mug of something steaming between his palms, looks up. “Hm?”

Dean leans back and forcefully kicks the box. It scrapes offensively against the tabletop.

“It’s won,” Dean repeats, this time monotone. Immediately, Cas’ face grows wary, despite the veneer of aloofness he constantly keeps between them now.

“It was never a competition,” he reminds Dean stonily, not looking at him.

“No, it wasn’t,” Dean agrees.

Silence falls between them again. It’s become impossible to engage Cas in any kind of conversation. Dean doesn’t bother trying anymore. He continues to stare at the box sitting in front of him, and it sneers back at him, unwavering. It builds up inside him, the anger, and before he can check himself, he’s boiling with it. He jerks to his feet, eyes still on the box.

“Fuck it,” he snaps, reaching down to try and pry the lid off. “ _Fuck it_ ,” he repeats, straining to open the lid. “This box has been around for how long? And we’ve never even looked inside? _Fucking fuck it_!” He throws all his strength into opening the lid, but it still refuses to budge. Cas watches silently, neutrally, from his seat. Dean scrubs a palm across his jaw, feeling wild.

“Fine.” He says shortly. “Let’s play it that way.”

He leaves the box where it is, storming to the balcony door and yanking it open. Cold air blows into the room along with a couple stray snowflakes. As soon as they cross the threshold, they become rain. Dean turns back to the table, ignoring Cas completely, and jerks the box off the coffee table. It falls to the floor with a loud thump, but still doesn’t open. Dean can see Cas out of the corner of his eye, still unmoving.

“Are you kidding me?” he spits at Cas, but Cas continues to watch in infuriating silence. Dean shakes his head angrily, and starts pulling the box towards the balcony. It’s slow going, but eventually, he pulls it over the lip of the door, and it slides much easier on the slick balcony. There’s no way he can lift it over the railing, but he thinks if he can flip it onto its side he’ll be able to just push it through the bars. He bends down, one knee dipping into the snow and quickly soaking through his jeans. He’s only in a t-shirt, the skin of his arms white, the hair standing on end. The wind cuts into him, hastening the cold where the snow has already soaked through. Cas has moved to the doorway now, standing unnaturally straight, his face still blank.

Dean shoves his shoulder into the box, maneuvering a foot to brace the opposite side while he attempts to tip it. He’s in his bare feet, however, which offer little traction, and he slips in the snow, which offers less.

“Cas,” he pleads, not meaning for it to come out quite that pathetic. The cold is seeping into him now, leaving harsh, painful pins and needles in his feet. Cas hesitates, his expression fliting for a moment. Reluctantly, he steps onto the balcony.

Dean tries again, but when he moves forward to hit his shoulder into it, he loses his footing and slips, falling onto the edge of the box. Red drips from his forehead, staining the wood and the snow. Immediately, Cas moves forward, face stormy.

“Damn it, Dean,” he growls, trying to pull him to his feet, but Dean bats him away.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he insists, bracing himself to try again, ignoring how the blood is so much hotter on his face- it melts the snow.

“Yes you are,” Cas snaps, grabbing two fistfuls of Dean’s t-shirt and hauling him to his feet. He starts forcing him back into the apartment, and they scuffle for a moment, but Dean manages to break his hold, shoving him backwards. Cas stumbles against the building, eyes burning.

“Get the hell out of here,” Dean snarls, turning towards the box again. “In fact, how about you just go, period?” He leans down again to keep futilely shoving at the immovable wood. “It’s not like you’re exactly _here_ , anyway.”

Behind him, Cas sags.

“You think I want to- to- _check out_ like this?” he asks, aghast, the wind almost carrying his voice away on its back. “Dean, do you think this has been _easy_ for me?”

“Easy for _you_?” Dean stands again, feeling himself lurch a bit. Blood has splashed down his shirt, coating his arms and feet as well. “Easy for you?” he repeats, half-hysterical. He holds up red hands, shoving them right in Cas’ face. “Every time, Cas, this is all I see- this is all I _am_! We were supposed to be in it together and you just- you just walked!” His voice wasn’t supposed to go this shrill, but he can feel himself losing it- he thinks it’s trickling away with all the blood.

Cas’ face, already pale, loses whatever color it has left.

“You need to come inside,” he says quietly, taking Dean’s stained hand. “Please.”

Dean looks at the box, and then back at Cas.

“I’m cold,” he says in a small voice, swaying.

“I know,” Cas says, leading him back into the living room, closing the door behind him. He grabs a stray blanket from the couch, wrapping it around Dean’s shoulders. “I’ll stitch you up,” he promises, coaxing Dean into the bathroom and onto the closed toilet seat.

“Where’d you go, Cas?” Dean mumbles as Cas searches through the medicine cabinet. There’s the _plonk_ of Cas dropping something, but no answer. “Where are you, Cas?”

“I’m right here,” Cas says, floating back into view. Dean has to blink a couple times to get him to stay in focus. He places both palms on Dean’s face to steady him and get a better look at the cut. His hands are much gentler than his eyes. His voice is sad.

“No,” Dean says mushily, “You’re not.”

Cas lightly cleans the wound, dabbing at it with something that stings, then hands Dean a cloth to hold to his forehead. Their rule is no hospitals, so long as they can attend to it themselves. Luckily, both Cas and Dean have learned how to stitch themselves up over the years, thanks to wayward parents or raging parents.

“It’s better this way, don’t you think?” Cas asks quietly, his tone implying the exact opposite sentiment. “We don’t get so caught up in each other.” He sanitizes a sewing needle, staring hard at it, as if focusing on that task will keep his mind too busy to keep up with this conversation.

Dean doesn’t know what to say. He watched the man in front of him kill his own brother- not without his own help- and all he wants to do is to make it better. If he could, he would wallow for the both of them.

“Do you ever think about what guilt actually is?” Cas continues, speaking more to himself now than to Dean. He sits on the edge of the tub, their knees just shy of knocking. “It’s feeling bad about something you’ve done, sure,” he allows, still staring at the needle, “But what really stops people from doing horrible things? The promise of guilt, or the fear of punishment? Regardless, both reasons revolve around the perpetrator and not the victim, and are selfish in nature.” He frowns slightly, brow creasing. “In the alley that night, when I was killing my own brother, neither of those things mattered to me. I wasn’t feeling guilty when I was knocking his teeth out, and the cops could have pulled up and I would have kept going—I just didn’t care.” He looks down at the floor, hands clasped together. “And I’ve been wondering, these past weeks; what kind of person can _do_ that? What kind of person am I, and what kind of person did he have to be?” Cas stands, retrieving the needle and moving Dean’s hand out of the way. He holds the wound shut as he starts stitching, and Dean tries not to wince.

“What kind of person _was_ he?” Dean asks.

Cas’ face hardens. For a moment, Dean thinks he’s not going to answer. They’ve done this dance before.

“He… delivered messages.” Cas says flatly. “He delivered messages that expressed my father’s disappointment in the recipient.”

Dean clears his throat.

“I assume these ‘messages’ weren’t just strongly worded letters,” he surmises.

“My father deals primarily with men,” Cas says, dropping his neutral tone, his voice trembling with only the slightest hint of the anger Dean knows he’s harboring. “The first message was breaking all of the fingers on a man’s weaker hand- the weaker one, so he could still sign anything my father needed him to. The second message…” he sighs heavily, “The second was a beaten wife or a beaten child.” He swallows. “The second warning was usually enough. But some still resisted, and those were my brother’s favorites; the third and final message. Once it got to that stage, my father had no interest in dealing with these men anymore, so he had my brother make sure those men could never do business with anyone again. They wouldn’t make it home for dinner that night, or any night after that.”

Dean feels vaguely sick.

“Is that what you were arguing about that night?” he asks.

“I tried to get him to stop,” Cas whispers, finishing up the stitches and snipping the line cleanly. He puts his hands behind him, searching for the edge of the tub again, and collapses onto it. He buries his face in his hands, and his voice comes out like an echo. “He started… _gloating_ about it. I tried to appeal to any decency left in him and he laughed at me and I just lost it.” He shakes his head. “You know the rest of the story.”

Dean’s first thought is, _what if it were Sam_? How bad could Sam get before Dean would feel the need to step in? Where does his loyalty to his family end? _Does_ it?

Cas grew up in a world wildly different than Dean. It sure as hell wasn’t perfect, but Dean grew up in an environment that emphasized family, no matter how thwarted the lesson. Family came first always. His job was watching Sam’s back, and sometimes, his father’s. Over the years, he’s tried his best to unlearn the worst parts of what his father instilled in him, and keep hold of the best, small in numbers as they may be.

Cas, on the other hand, grew up alone. It doesn’t take much to figure out that everyone in his family learned at an early age to protect themselves first. There was no sibling camaraderie. There was no safety blanket. There was just cold, always.

“I should have told you months ago,” Cas says. “If you had known, I could have saved you months of misery.”

Dean shakes his head, and then grimaces. Not a good idea.

“I don’t think it matters,” he admits. “It’s not like I feel… relieved, or something. I mean-” he chews his tongue. “If your brother had been a stand up guy? A true Good Samaritan, or even just not a complete dick, I would have felt worse. But knowing the kind of person he was, it’s not like I feel _better_ about it.” He hesitates. “If that makes sense.”

Cas nods.

“I’ve been consumed with the idea of what kind of person I am,” he says, “Less so concerned with the reason why I’ve been thinking about it.” He raises his eyebrows resignedly, “I think that makes me a bad person.”

“I don’t think so.”

For the first time since they made it into the bathroom, Cas meets Dean’s eye. A challenge.

“What if I told you the reason I’ve been disappearing for hours at a time lately is because I’ve been meeting with my father?”

Dean blanches. “I… what?”

“I thought I could convince myself I was as bad as my brother.”

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.  He feels cold again.

“Why would you feel the need to prove that to yourself?” he pleads. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Look at what I come from, Dean,” Cas says, and it scares Dean how reasonable his voice sounds. “I killed a man. I killed my kin. There’s nothing that’ll win dad’s affection faster than the murder of a blood relative. Not in the Milton family.” He shrugs. “I tried to accept my fate.”

Dean closes his eyes. The kind of twisted shit that must be decomposing in Cas’ mind since he was a kid has to be the most toxic kind of sludge. For the first time, Dean feels properly sorry for every child of the Milton family. His heart aches for those children.

“‘Tried’?” Dean asks.

“I thought about the night I came home drunk. I thought about how I touched your face.” He stares down at his own hands. “Everything I’ve let happen to my own family and because of my own family, and all I could think about was how much I…” he trails off. “You mean a great deal to me, Dean. We met under terrible circumstances, but I think you’ve made me a better person.” He hesitates. “Without your influence, I probably would have accepted my father’s offer.”

Dean’s throat goes dry.

“You can’t do this for me, Cas,” he says, “You have to do it for yourself.”

“I did,” Cas argues, “ _I_ walked away. But I’d be a fool to pretend that you didn’t have a part in it.”

“Fuck.” Dean rubs his forehead, trying to calm the pounding that’s been behind his eyes for the last half hour. “I think I need to go sleep for about thirty years.”

“Actually, if you’re feeling up to it, I was hoping you could humor me one more time tonight,” Cas says.

***

In the middle of the night during the first snowfall of the year, Dean and Castiel return to the scene of the crime.

“Why are we here, Cas?” Dean asks.

Cas turns off the engine and stares straight out the windshield, into the dark alley.

“Because I think we need to be,” Cas says. He exits the car, and Dean has no choice but to follow. The snow crunches under their feet as they make their way into the alley. Cas wore no hat, and the snowflakes melt in his dark hair as soon as they land. Dean watches his back, like he always has, and only then realizes that this is one of those carryover lessons from his childhood. If you care about them, you’ve got their back. It’s just how it is when it comes to family.

About halfway down the alley, Cas stops, and stares at the ground.

“This is it,” he says.

Dean joins him, and they stand side by side in the alley where they killed a man. A bad man, to be sure, but it doesn’t change the color of the blood on their hands.

To Dean’s surprise, Cas grabs his hand.

Dean squeezes.

“You can’t choose your family, Cas,” he says quietly. “But you can choose not to be like them.”

Cas squeezes his hand back, and then drops it. He continues to walk down the alley, and like he knows he always will, Dean follows him.

The pier is freezing. The wind whips angrily at the water and tears at them as they walk to the very end of it. Dean stares into the lashing black waves, knowing he’ll never escape them, not really. He dreams about the waves.

He wonders if that’s how it got into their apartment. After all, it’s just a different kind of wave.

 “I’ll be back in a minute,” Cas says. “Can you wait?”

At Dean’s nod, he turns and walks back down the pier. Dean regards the ocean again. He aches with it.

He only knows Cas returns when he hears a strange dragging sound on the wood. When he turns around to see Cas dragging the wooden box down towards him, he immediately starts forward.

“ _What_?” is all he says.

“While you were getting dressed,” is Cas’ only explanation. He maneuvers Dean out of the way. “You already did this for me once. It’s my turn.”

Cas drags the box to the very end of the pier, and then straightens up to catch his breath.

“Do you really think it’s this simple?” Dean asks quietly.

Cas laughs blackly on an exhale.

“Nothing about this has been easy, Dean,” he says.

He pushes the wooden box into the water, and together, they watch it sink until it disappears under the waves.

“I don’t even think it was real,” Dean admits.

Cas shrugs.

“Maybe.”

This time, Dean takes Cas’ hand.

“We could leave here,” he says, staring towards the horizon; he can’t tell the ocean and the sky apart. It’s only when the stars appear that he knows.

“We could,” Cas agrees.

“This place is haunted,” Dean says.

“No more than we are,” Cas says.

They look at each other, and Dean watches a snowflake land on Cas’ cheek, and then dissolve.

Dean marvels at the sight.


End file.
